


Null and Void

by HyperKey



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-21 01:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 55,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4810262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyperKey/pseuds/HyperKey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His family getting caught in an attack, him trying everything to keep them safe, and before he knows it, he finds himself in a net of carefully placed lies yet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not the good kind of surprises

**Author's Note:**

> MGR:R Slight AU, First time writing for this Series. Have mercy, the storyline is so complex that it takes a while to grasp it. I'm trying my best to keep everyone in character. It won't be a super dark story (by my definition), but angst is what I can do best, so don't expect anything too happy either. I hope you enjoy it anyway! (I always fall for the angsty ones |D)  
> Disclaimer: Metal Gear does not belong to me. I just play around with it and borrow the characters. None of the characters belong to me unless stated otherwise.  
> Claire is my creation, but she won't appear much.

Heavy rain dripped onto the pavement, running down the streets in tiny rivers. The ground mirrored  colorful streetlights of a town he couldn't quite grasp the name of. There was the mission, he was just completing it. After what happened just a few weeks ago he had been mostly running on autopilot. Kevin had joked about that at some point, but the joke fell on deaf ears. While he had planned to fight his own war now, he had somehow ended up back with Maverick again.  Boris had called him a few days ago, asking for his assistance on retrieving a child from within a battlefield.

Raiden had needed hours to decide, he had planned to head home to see his family for a few days, to ease their minds, to forget what had happened. He was glad he hadn't told Rose about his plans when he agreed to take the mission. Still, at the moment he would have preferred to sit at home and play video games with his son, instead of waiting in the cold rain and hide behind cardboard boxes.

His mind was racing with all sorts of things that got in the way of the mission. He constantly reminded himself to focus on the mission, to forget about his personal issues. He knew very well how hard they would hit him once this was over. But he had to stay focused here, for the sake of his family. Rose was expecting him to come back sooner or later. There also was the bright smile John always greeted him with. He had to come back, no matter where this mission would take him.

It had been silent for a few while, no signs of enemies, no codec calls. He found that slightly suspicious, although he enjoyed the unusual silence. The sun would rise in a few hours, then everything would start again. Once more he reminded himself of the mission objective and that there was no place for his personal issues.

It was a mission like any other, yet the simple mention of the person he needed to find being a child made him nervous. If it had been an adult he would have seen this with different eyes. He wouldn't have tried to avoid any battle. The aftertaste of the battles a few weeks ago was still lingering in his mind, he still hadn't come at terms with his inner devil. Maybe he even was afraid of killing again. He wouldn't hesitate when he had to fight, but afterwards he would reflect on the battle for hours, ask himself if it really had been necessary to take a life.

His body sprang into action when his eyes picked up a movement on the far left. He was already getting ready to attack when he realized that it had been a stray cat. The feline seemed to look for something to eat between the bodies that lay strewn across the ground for miles. Raiden himself had only been responsible for a handful. Most of them were already dead when he had arrived here.

He was about to go back into hiding when the dreaded sound of the codec rang in his head. It was voice only, the caller's name displayed below the black display. Courtney.  Raiden heard voices shouting in the background. It sounded like Kevin and Boris were arguing with each other. "What's going on?" the cyborg asked before anyone could say anything. These calls had been quite calm in the past, hearing all the ruckus was a little irritating. The missing picture was suspicious too.

"Technical difficulties." He heard Courtney sigh. "Your data is going haywire, are you alright?"

Raiden lifted a confused eyebrow. His heart rate hat picked up because of the cat, but otherwise he hadn't noticed anything different.

"Yeah." came his short answer.

The 'error' sign on the display flickered and showed Courtney after a second or two. The image was grainy and flickering but she smiled at him.

"Seems like something messed with our data." Kevin muttered as he leaned over Courtney's shoulder to look at the screen in front of him, right into Raiden's face. "Yo, buddy, you okay?"

Raiden just nodded and heaved an inner sigh. "Yeah."

 

 

He knew more about this girl than about his own son, he noticed. Claire was her name. Her favorite food, color, places she hung out with friends, favorite animal, TV-shows, hobbies. Why had he never bothered to find that out about his own son? The girl was just two years older than John. About Sunny's age. And the daughter of a politician he didn't bother to remember the name of. After what he learned a few years ago, politicians didn't seem important anymore. They all were liars. Everything was part of some conspiracy.

"Call me when you find something out." Raiden muttered at Courtney and ended the call.

He scanned the area gain, deemed it safe and sneaked between buildings to get further into the town. The girl must have been somewhere close, if the data was right. Judging by the lack of gunfire, Raiden assumed that the people in the area either felt safe or were harmless, but he wasn't in the mood to take any risks

While he sneaked past an abandoned car he once again felt disgusted at all the dead people. All innocent civilians who had nothing to do with all this. Even Raiden himself didn't understand completely why this fight had broken out. While it appeared to have a political background, the fights here seemed to be between people with different interests.

The codec rang once more and he held his breath for a moment, arguing with himself if he should accept it or not. If he didn't he'd might miss important information, if he did, who knew what they would tell him.

"The girl is close by." Courtney said after he had eventually accepted the call. "She should be in one of the buildings to your left."

"Got it." He growled at her, didn't look at her at all and just headed over to the buildings.

It was too silent. Too calm. There were a few fires burning that the rain hadn't put out yet, smoke coming from some buildings and rubble. Leftovers of detonated bombs. When he climbed over the rubble of what had once been a door, he heard a frightened squeak at the far end of the room that appeared to have been a small grocery store prior to the bombing.

"Found her." He relayed over the codec and carefully walked over to the frightened child that tried to hide behind a fallen table. Her bright blue dress almost made her glow in the darkness. It was sheer luck that no one had found her yet.

He wasn't sure how to approach this girl. Sunny had been frightened but quickly warmed up to him, John admired him, same with George. How did one approach a child that was frightened like this?

How had he done this with Sunny? He tried to remember, took a deep breath and crouched down to be on eyelevel with the girl.  The girl tried to scramble away but the wall behind her trapped her and she was forced to stare at the man in front of her.

"I'm Raiden..." He muttered. " I'm... with the good guys..." he wasn't not sure if the girl would believe him or not. Good and evil had borders that couldn't be determined that easily. He himself had only started to grasp that concept quite recently.

She stared at him with big blue eyes, her face scratched and full of dirt, but no serious injuries visible. The girl sniffled tears away when she slowly reached out to him. She appeared to be a very sheltered child, oblivious to the cruelty of the world. For a child like that she had done a good job on surviving. Raiden scoffed at his own thoughts.

 _'Kids are cruel'_ muttered a voice in his head.

He forced the voice back to where it came from and reached his hand out to the girl. "I'll get you out of here."

The girl seemed to have trouble deciding if she should trust him or not. When she leaned forward to inspect his face closer he could see her uncertainty.

"I'm not supposed to go with strangers."

That girl was smart. Hopefully smart enough to just take his hand and walk out of here with him to the car he had parked a few miles away in hopes no one would try to steal it.

In response to what she had said, he nodded slowly. "I tell that to my son a lot too." He tried. Maybe if she learned that he had a son, she would trust him a little more. She didn't have to know that it had been Rose who had taught John all these basic things.

"Aren't you a cyborg? How can you have children?" she bluntly asked as her gaze wandered down.

Raiden closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. "Prior to this." He forced a smile and knocked onto the metal that covered his body.

"What's his name?"

Raiden was so relieved to have her trust that he almost forgot what he had to do. He would have loved to chitchat the time away, but this was still a battlefield and if they didn't get out of there quickly, there would be fights.

"I tell you when we're out of here, alright?"

The girl nodded slowly and scrambled to her feet. Her knees were scratched. Nothing serious. The dress was torn on the hem, likely from getting caught in rubble while she had tried to run away. Once more Raiden wondered how a girl dressed like this had ended up here.  She looked out of place, like a child that got lost in an amusement park and couldn't find her way back.

When the girl took his hand she flinched away at the cold metal. He was about to apologize for it, when she grabbed his hand again. "You're cold." She stated.

"I guess that's true."

The girl giggled at that and he stood, carefully holding her hand as he escorted her over the rubble and out of the building.

"Where are we going?"

"We need to get back to my car. Your father is waiting for you."

Suddenly the girl stopped and he almost dragged her along as he didn't notice right away. When he turned to look at her, the girl's grey eyes were filled with tears. "D-daddy didn't come at all!" she howled. "The whole time I was waiting for him but he didn't come at all!"

Raiden nervously looked around, afraid someone might hear the girl, but no one seemed close. He also was a little overwhelmed with the situation. John never cried... at least not when he was there. Was the boy trying to be brave so Raiden didn't have to worry? What was he like when he wasn't home? How did one comfort a child? With Sunny it had been really easy. She wasn't the type of girl to dwell on emotions.

"Your... Your father asked for someone to come pick you up. H-He was afraid he might not find you" Raiden muttered. It was totally made up, but anything that would make her stop crying was alright.

"So they sent me... because I'm good at finding lost children." He flinched at the bragging. He wasn't great with words. A joke here and there with people he knew, or felt confident around... it was funny how a little girl could make him feel so insecure about his words. Was that why John always covered his face and muttered _'that's embarrassing, dad.'_ ?

"You are?" the girl finally asked and wiped the tears away with the backs of her hands.

Raiden nodded. "Let's get out of here. I want to avoid fights."

"Are you a knight?" the girl asked when she noticed the sheath on his back as she skipped a few steps to grasp his hand again.

"Something like that." He answered. He didn't want to explain more to her.

Raiden maneuvered the girl through small alleys, helped her over boxes and told her more than once to be absolutely quiet. His car had been in sight when armed men started to patrol the streets. The cyborg cursed in his mind.

"There are men..." the girl whispered. "They look dangerous."

"They are."

He had parked the car in a relatively open space. There were a few trees but they still had to clear quite the distance to find a new hiding place. Raiden had to decide between attacking, trying to sneak past or just pretending to walk back to his car.  Either of the situations held risks. Not to him, but to the girl. If he fought and left her, they could find her. They might shoot her when they saw her too. He scolded himself. _Thinking too much again!_

"What do we do now?" the girl wanted to know.

"I'm trying to find a solution." He whispered back.

After a moment of thinking he came up with a way that seemed to bear the least risk. Slowly he explained his plan to the girl and picked her up after he was done. The little girl clung to him when he walked out of his hiding place and towards his car.  He now also saw that trying to make a run for the next hiding place would have been way more suspicious than just walking casually over to the enemies.

These people were no cyborgs. They were ordinary humans, armed to their teeth but still plain humans. Raiden wasn't thrilled about the possibility of fighting them. They would have no chance. One of the three men around his car inspected said object with unusual interest, the other two had already noticed him. Their rifles were aiming at him, but their gazes were uncertain, maybe even scared.

"Stay where you are Cyborg!" one of the two yelled.

Raiden stopped in his tracks, the girl clinging closer to him. He could feel her trembling. Even though he had expected a situation like this, he wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. Alone he would have attacked them. But the girl was important. He had to make sure she was alright, no matter what.

"Why are you here?!" the other yelled.  The man at his car was looking up now too, yet he was calm and steady, hand on his rifle but he didn't seem to see a reason in appearing threatening.

"We just got lost and want to go home." Raiden tried. 

"That your car?" the third guy asked. All three looked the same in their clothing. It wasn't made for battle, was filthy and torn. This really didn't seem like a big fight between two powerful forces. It was rather a conflict between a few people.

"We're just passing through, don't want to interrupt whatever you're doing."

Raiden took a step forward, ready to shield himself and the girl, but neither of them moved.

The third man stepped away from the car and shrugged. "You better get out of here quickly. It won't be long before the others show up again."

Raiden didn't bother to ask what that meant when he walked over to his car and let the girl inside. He quickly made his way out of there, glad he didn't need to explain to the girl how to behave in a car. The girl had been driven around by her father all her life, he assumed. How happy she should have been to have a father that cared about her like that.

"Aren't you supposed to stop at red lights?" the girl asked when he had failed to break when the traffic light jumped from yellow to red.

He pulled over to a parking lot, killed the engine and took a deep breath. "I need to make a phone call. It won't take long."

The girl briefly nodded, and watched as the codec screen popped up in front of the stranger she had just met.

Kevin seemed a little riled up when he picked up the call. "Yo, Raiden. Everything okay?"

Raiden nodded. "Where am I supposed to bring the girl, HQ?"

Kevin nodded slowly as if thinking. "Yeah. Her father still needs a bit to arrive."

Raiden nodded once more and started the engine again. "Your father will pick you up in a bit." He promised, while he felt like he lied to the girl. He couldn't count how often he had promised to show up more at home and how often John had asked him when he would come home.

When he pulled into the parking lot to Maverick HQ, Courtney was outside, coffee in one hand, leaned against the wall and stared at Raiden as if she waited for something. Raiden let the girl out of the car, only slightly surprised when she took his hand and let him guide her towards the woman.

"Is she your wife?" the girl asked bluntly.

Raiden scoffed. "No."

"Do you even have a wife?"

"Yes."

The small girl scrunched her nose and studied him from head to toe once more. "Well I suppose you're not that bad looking."

"Is that really what a little girl should say to a grown up?" Raiden backfired. He wondered where the girl had learned to speak like that. She did not sound like the daughter of your typical politician.

"Well you saved me, and I don't think you're bad looking. Too bad you're married."

He sped up a little to be faster with Courtney and have the girl out of his hair. This was getting awkward.

Courtney crouched down to greet the girl, but Claire had different plans. She stepped behind Raiden and hugged his leg, much like John and Sunny had done it a lot.

"Scary Bi-"

Raiden spoke before the girl said anything more. "Her name is Courtney." A little quieter he added, "Someone teach this kid some manners..."

Courtney only sighed deeply and opened the doors to let them in. The girl let go of Raiden and strolled ahead, eyeing the entrance hall as if she had never seen anything like it.

 "I suppose not everyone has charming kids like you do." Courtney concluded.

"You never even met him." Raiden frowned.

"I saw how you treat George." She smiled. "And the girl...-" the woman bit her lip and furrowed her brows.

"Sunny." Raiden offered.

"Yes. Her. They're all so lively around you, I just assumed your son would be like them."

He shrugged and opened a set of door to let the girl in. It was a small room with a few chairs. "Can you wait here for a moment?" Raiden asked Claire.

"Sure." she shrugged and looked around even after he left.

Courtney tailed him through the corridors, half wondering what Raiden was about to do, half knowing it already.

"Does your son even know what you're doing?" she asked. The woman never let go of something she had started.

"Most of it..." he muttered and a shadow casted over his face. "He still thinks I'm a super hero or something, though..." he tried to play it off, but Courtney somehow knew that he liked it a little. Being admired, accepted. Free of judgmental words.

The man entered the locker-room and opened a backpack. Courtney only realized that she shouldn't be there when she noticed all the lockers. But no one else was there and Raiden certainly didn't come here to change.

He pulled out a portable gaming device from his backpack and headed back to the room where they had left the girl.

"I didn't know you were the gaming type." Courtney grinned.

He shook his head. "This was for my son. But I feel like we need to keep this girl busy until her father arrives."

Courtney agreed with him on that. She didn't know why exactly but the girl seemed to be the type that was easily getting bored and wandered around. Neither of them wanted the girl anywhere near the delicate equipment or lost in the giant building. It could be a maze to anyone who was here the first time. Raiden still didn't know all corridors.

The girl beamed when Raiden gave her the device. "Really?!"

"Until your father arrives. Don't break it, it belongs to my son." He said harsher than he meant to, but the girl just nodded eagerly and hopped onto a chair to play whatever game the device held.

 Two hours later there still was no sign of the father of the girl. Said girl had gotten bored of the game and wandered around the building as predicted. Courtney had been reassigned to be her baby sitter for the time being. She also took on the task of providing the girl with a shower and a fresh set of clothing which consisted of one of Courtney's blouses. The piece of clothing now acted as a dress for the girl but she didn't seem to care much when she followed the woman into the kitchen and out of the kitchen, to the women's bathroom, back to the computer room.

Raiden was a little relieved that the girl didn't seem too interested in computers. She had looked at them, but quickly found something else to distract herself with. It was a Rubik's cube Kevin had kept on his desk for a while. It had been collecting dust but when the girl saw it she took it without even asking and began to throw it into the air and caught it. Raiden watched her from the corner of his eye, but didn't really pay attention to her.

No one was in the field at the moment, so Kevin was playing a game of ping pong with a rather advanced AI that had him cursing from time to time, Boris was in the Kitchen, Courtney wrote her report and Raiden tried to think about what to tell Rose when he came home. He had booked the flight already, it would go in two days. It was supposed to be a surprise. Dok had already scheduled a meeting where Raiden would get his civilian body again. It was a lighter version, looked more human. And it wasn't capable of taking as much damage as the one he was currently in, but he wasn't planning on fighting anyway. It would be a peaceful month, he hoped. With all the commotion he got were small quarrels between John and Rose and the occasional fight with his wife.

It was a peaceful little moment, but it was destroyed in an instant when a breaking news story flashed up on the TV screen that had been playing in the background and no one had paid attention to. Kevin grabbed the remote to turn up the volume. Claire let the cube drop to the ground, probably because she was surprised by the sudden loud noise.

The screen showed smoke and fire, screaming people, crying people. Nothing new to either of them, except the girl, but something was very odd.

'-The terrorist attack in-'

An alarm flashed up on Courtney's computer screen when they showed a map of New Zealand.

"Raiden?" The woman asked in surprise when she looked at the unusual reading that had caused the alarm. It had been triggered by the heart rate spiking from calm to fully alerted in less than a second.

"Turn the volume up!" Raiden barked even though he heard everything clearly already.

'We will keep you posted on details.' And the report ended, flashing back to some boring old news everyone knew already. None of them was interested in it anymore.

Kevin and Courtney turned to Raiden who had already grabbed the next best cell phone and called Rose. Kevin was about to protest about the huge bill this call would produce, but he caught himself. This wasn't a situation to complain about these things.

"Rose!" Raiden yelled into the receiver when the women picked up. Kevin and Courtney could clearly hear the shaken voice of a woman, even though the words weren't clear enough to understand.

The two employees of Maverick were surprised to see Raiden's face lose all color. It would have certainly been a  thing that was mention worthy to Herr Doktor, yet neither of them thought about that at the moment.

"He needs to be somewhere!"

Another inaudible reply.

"He has to!" Raiden's voice was cracking, panic seeping through. "Look again!" he barked, eyes wide, fists clenched, breath going fast.

Courtney wasn't sure if she should urge the man to sit down or just leave him be. Then the call apparently ended rather abruptly when Raiden suddenly yelled into the receiver. "Rose?! Rose!" he took the phone from his ear to look at it, held it back to his ear, but received no further reply. He was about to toss the device across the room, then remembered it wasn't his and set it on the table rather roughly before he slumped down on a chair and buried his head in his palms.

"Raiden..." Courtney tried, unsure about putting a hand on his shoulder or not when she saw him like that.

"If you want to go home-" Kevin muttered silently. "We can take care of a single girl..."

Raiden couldn't reply for a moment. His mind was racing with lots of theories and situations on what could have happened.

"I've already booked a flight..." He muttered absentmindedly. He knew he wouldn't last two days without knowing how the situation was at home.

"I know." Courtney muttered and crouched down in front of him as if he was a child that hurt his knee. "You told me you were going home on Tuesday."

"John... Rose can't find him." It took a lot of effort to even say those words. They didn't make sense to him at all. Ever since he knew of the boys existence he had always been there. And now he could be somewhere, lost, maybe even dead!

A tremor run through his body at that thought. It must have been visible because Courtney moved closer and gave him a somewhat awkward hug.

"I'm sure he hid somewhere." Kevin smiled. "He has _you_ as father."

Raiden looked up, scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean?" a faint smile crept on his still pale face.

"That means he must be just as good at sneaking around as you are." Courtney continued.

Raiden knew they were trying to cheer him up, but he also knew that John had no idea about these things. Sure, he had told him some stories, toned down to be child friendly, but who would expect a normal child to know how to react on a battlefield.

 "He's not like me." Raiden then said. "He would have no idea what to do."

He had learned through trial and error, through fear and through victory. There must have been some sort of talent in it. And a lot of threats. John had never seen a battle field. Not a real one. He had never been in situations where one step decided between life and death. Never.

"Give him some credit, man." Kevin sighed. His cell phone rang a moment later and when he picked it up he looked confused for a moment. The voice on the phone was none he had heard before.

"Jack! You need to come home! I don't care about any mission!" Kevin heard a woman yell into his ear.

Raiden took the phone before Kevin had realized that it was Rose who had called the number that must have been displayed on her phone at home.

"Rose..." Raiden muttered, suddenly emotionally exhausted. "I... booked a flight two days from now... I wanted to surprise you two... but now-"

"I don't care! Forget the money! Come home! I searched everything, he isn't here!" she was in panic, Raiden heard it clearly.

"Rose!" he now yelled. "Calm down! I can't think when you panic too!"

"Now you're using me to keep sane?! As far as I know your sanity has vanished long ago!"

Raiden flinched. He knew the woman let just go of all her boiled up anger, but that didn't change the fact that she was right about what she had said.

"Rose..."

"Then stay where you are! I can find him on my own!" the call ended and the cell phone slipped out of his hands. He didn't know it was possible for this body to tremble as much as it did at the moment.

Kevin and Courtney who both had heard every word of the loud argument looked at each other with wide eyes. Neither of them knew what to say, but they both felt that someone had to say something.

"I... could drive you to the airport?" Courtney offered.


	2. Crying Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is significantly shorter, but it felt like a nice break before the next chapter.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it :D

 

He had to admit that he was surprised when he got on the plane and no one asked stupid questions. Dok had him switch bodies in record time too.  At the airport they usually would wave him away from the other people and ask him tons of questions too, some needed, some very personal. He dreaded any question. Being a cyborg seemed to be the invitation to normal humans to treat him like someone inferior. Less than a human being, more a machine. While it was true on the technical aspect, he certainly still thought like a human being and the words hurt. He didn't hide away for fun after all. He hated the gazes, the whispers, the mothers who dragged their children away when he was too close.

It went too smooth, he thought. There had to be a catch if everything went so smoothly. Maybe they knew him already, he went on this flight every few months and he stood out anyway. He had always stood out.

When he was sitting on his seat he wished it would be over already. Crammed up in a small place like this, with people all around, babies crying, mothers yelling. He fumbled for the headphones, close his eyes and concentrated on the blaring music. He didn't like it much, but it blocked the noise out. It was some band Kevin had recommended. Raiden didn't listen to the stewardess, knew what they would say anyway. It was always the same.

After a while his mind was drifting off. He was thinking about Rose and John, worry spread through him once more. What if? What would they do? Where could John be? Was he still alive at all?.

 _"You know what would be really cool?"_ John had once asked. _"If you could fly with that body! Like in TV when they doo all these fancy things!"_

 _"I prefer to stay on solid ground."_ He had commented after a moment _._

John hung his shoulders in mock disappointment.How clearly he still remembered that. _"I'd never be late for school when you're home."_

_"I'm not a taxi."_

The boy had laughed.

Raiden clenched his fists. It was no use to imagine the worst over and over again, damn he knew that. And still his mind refused to do anything else. He couldn't focus on the book Courtney had lent him, the music only made him more anxious. And it didn't help that it was dark outside. He couldn't see anything through the clouds.

The woman next to him kept gazing at him, sometimes with a frown, sometimes with a glare. He didn't know what to think about that. She was probably angry that she had to sit next to a cyborg. If he had the money, he'd be sitting somewhere else. At least he was able to cancel his flight and get some of the money back before he booked this one. And then he would have to rent a car too. Another thing why he hated this. Dok was more or less reasonable about the maintenance costs, but that didn't mean it was cheap.

He had drifted off into some sort of sleep after a while, not really sleeping as that would have meant to power down some systems, but so lost in thoughts that he didn't take note of his surroundings. He had planned to surprise John with a visit to an amusement park, had thought about any possible situation they could end up in, and sort of hoped that the boy was still interested in these things. Sometimes he just had to do things he hated so the boy would have some sort of fun when he was around. Videogames could only do so much and they got boring after a while.  It was like the King Kong movie. It was still on a DVD somewhere in the movie drawer, but neither Rose nor him had touched it in years. That drawer had filled with all sorts of different movies and Rose sometimes joked about it, sometimes she pestered him into watching a movie with him and they would stay up until late at night.

Sometimes they also fought, trivial things, stuff no one needed to fight about. Often Raiden wondered if Rose would get fed up with him someday. Take John and just leave him. She had done it once already, but he still wasn't sure if she had said the truth back then. Was she really not afraid anymore? Was it really alright for him to be who he really was? Everything he did was carefully thought through. But sometimes anger got the better of him, fear let him say things he didn't want to say and Rose got angry at him, yelled.

Once or twice John had overheard them, then the boy had either cried or yelled.

 

 _"You're not cooking yourself?"_ Raiden had once asked when he noticed that Rose was about to order food.

 _"John and I had an argument over my cooking skills..."_ She had laughed nervously. _"He said he won't eat anything I made anymore, a few days ago."_

He had tried to look hurt but inside he was praising his son for telling Rose what he couldn't tell her in all the years they were together _"Don't. Lets cook something together."_

Rose lifted her eyebrows. _"...Don't tell me my cooking really is that bad."_

 _"I won't."_ he had replied and turned to a cabinet to see what Rose had stocked up on.

 _"It is that bad?"_ Rose asked then. She had had an expression between disappointment and realization on her face.

 _"Rose..."_ Raiden had sighed.

_"Why didn't you tell me?"_

_"I didn't want to hurt your feelings-"_

_"No, you didn't tell me because you didn't want me to get angry at you! You're selfish!"_

He had left the house then, didn't come back until the next moment. Rose had been waiting for him in the kitchen between cartons of pizza.

Raiden slowly opened his eyes and gazed at his watch. The music had stopped, the book had fallen off his lap. He really wanted to walk around a bit. Though he didn't want to scare the woman next to him any more. She was still glaring daggers at him.

It would be about half an hour until the plane landed, time he could pass with reading. When he picked the book up the woman spoke to him for the first time.

"Is it a good book?" She asked him silently.

Raiden turned to look at her, looking for an answer. "I don't know, didn't read much of it yet."

She nodded. "Can i have it for a bit?"

He gave her the book, watched as she read the cover text and opened it. The next 30 minutes she flipped pages and read a few sentences, then when the seatbelt sign flashed up she gave it back to him.

"I think I'll buy it for my son when I get home." She smiled. "Thank you."

He forced a smile and nodded, his mind drifting off to dwell about John once more. Where was that boy...? Rose would have messaged him if she had found him. Or was she so relieved that she forgot about it? She hadn't answered any of his calls.  He wasn't sure if she willingly ignored them or if that had other reasons.

The flight had taken a significant chunk of time and he was rushing through the airport , didn't bother about any sort of luggage since he didn't have any. Most of the stuff he needed was at home anyway. He tried not to run into any people when he made his way over to the building where they rented cars.

It had taken a lot of talking to even get a car. He usually didn't bother and took a Taxi, but he had wasted enough time.

Not being able to contact Rose made him more nervous by the minute as he sped down the highway from the airport in the car he had rented and drove to their house.

No one knew how many people had died in the explosions, but he assumed that it had been a few.  And it had been so close to his home too. Was this all a coincidence? Did his family get caught in that because they happened to live there? Or was it planned and another conspiracy? One more thing to hurt him? Who would do it? World Marshall? Someone else? And New Zealand had been safe! He should have found a better place, somewhere with less population.

Everyone and their dog seemed to know everything about him. It wouldn't even surprise him anymore if this wasn't a coincidence. Someone who wanted revenge maybe.

When he pulled into a parking lot close to the house he could see Rose sitting on the wooden staircase in front of their house. The building itself was finished, but it was still sparsely furnished. The laundry room still lacked tiles and decent wallpaper, the corridor upstairs  and the bathroom only had a naked light-bulb as light source, their bedroom had no curtains yet. That was how it had been the last time he was here.  

Rubble and debris was lying around, their house completely intact though, albeit a bit dirty. The sky was blue, sun shining and it didn't seem like an attack at all. It was eerily silent though, no bird to be heard, no people to be seen. Only Rose sitting there staring at the ground in front of her. She was holding her cell phone, stared at it, but didn't seem to see anything that was displayed there.

Raiden slowly walked up to her, troubled at the sight. He wasn't sure how to approach her, afraid of her raging or yelling at him. They had had many fights but every time they happened he ended up running away for hours. He had made no progress in that department. Running still seemed to be the best option for him.

"Rose..." he muttered silently when he was almost in front of her.

The woman's head snapped up and she fixed his eyes on him, that was all the movement she made. Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her cheek, the phone she had held so tightly in her hands clattered to the ground as her trembling fingers couldn't hold it anymore. She sobbed, just staring at him and trembling like a leaf.

Without thinking he picked her up, held her tightly and tried to calm her down even though he had no idea how to. Rose rarely lost her cool like that, she rarely cried, she rarely panicked. And he was just as scared as she was.

He rested a hand on her hair and held her tightly with the other. He didn't know what to say or if words were even needed. "Rose..."

"Jack... I can't find him..." the woman whispered between sobs.

"We will find him." He tried to sound confident, hoped it was possible to even have confidence in this situation. The boy could be anywhere. He could be dead.

"He was playing at a friend's house... close to where the explosion happened."

Raiden would never get used to the sensation that felt like the ground parted and sucked him into an endless void. No matter how often he had experienced that feeling already, it always felt like the first time.


	3. Jack in the Box

After a while he let go of Rose and they walked into the house. This was how he remembered his home and he liked it this way, but it felt strangely empty without John being there. The boy would come running to the door the moment he stepped through, jumps at him, hug him and tell him about all the things he did in school and with his friends.

"I've called the police already..." Rose muttered as if she had read his thoughts. "They're looking for him too, but... they haven't found him yet."

Raiden only nodded. He didn't want to ask the questions that were racing in his head. Also, if he had been among the dead, they certainly would have been notified... right? He leaned against the wall in the hallway, anger and worry clear on his face. He had seen it so often, dead people all around, dead children. Back then he'd been just a bit younger than John. 

"Jack?" Rose asked from the living room and  soon poked her head through the door.

She went silent and watched him for a moment, his trembling frame, his eyes that seemed to gaze through her. She placed a hand on his shoulder and an expression so close to pain went over his features. His lips were trembling and she saw tears in his eyes, but he didn't let them fall. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then straightened and placed a hand over hers.

"I... go look for him." Raiden decided, but Rose grabbed both of his shoulders now.

"You need to calm down first. What good would it do if you run into a car or something..."

He had no energy to make a remark. A car wouldn't be much of a threat to him, though this body would sustain more damage than the other. He couldn't care less. Rose half dragged, half pushed him into the living room and forced him to sit down. Over the years she had begun to understand his body language. It took a while, even longer when his body was no longer human, but there were subtle things he would do, and she knew how to interpret them, though anger would sometimes make her lose reason and he still ran when it got too much. It wasn't as frequent anymore and he came back sooner too.

He was hunched over on the couch, elbows on his knees, head hanging. Rose crouched down in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. She felt guilty for telling him about John's disappearance. He had had a very similar reaction when she had lied to him about the miscarriage back then. And while she had sworn to herself never to feel guilty for protecting her child, she felt sorry at times. She knew she was at fault for him spiraling down even more into the depths of painful memories.

This time though, she felt it too. The hopelessness, the fear and worry, and the pain. She could only imagine how her husband felt at the moment, but she had a good idea. He was always emotional, yelled a lot, was afraid, panicked easily, and damn he was so naive at times. He didn't trust people, even less now that he was a cyborg and he always tried to avoid serious conversations.  Had he changed at all?

Rose smiled at that. He was a bit more mature, calmer. He loved being a father, tried anything to make John happy. The boy was so understanding too. He rarely asked questions, tried to figure his father out on his own, but sometimes he asked Rose about things.

 _"Why are they calling dad Rai....Rai..."_ John had asked his mother not too long ago.

 _"Raiden."_ His mother had replied  _"It's a codename."_

_"It sounds weird..."_

_"It's Japanese."_

_"Is it important for him to have a codename?"_ John had frowned. _"What's wrong with 'Jack'?"_

Rose gently ran her fingers through the blond hair of her husband, hoped he would calm down a bit more. Not just because she wanted to look for John again, but also because she hated when he was like this.

A few more minutes passed, then Raiden lifted his head and looked at Rose. "I go look for him."

"We go together." Rose decided.

Raiden only nodded. He couldn't find any words, didn't think it would help to say anything anyway.

 

They slowly made their way through the neighborhood, a place Raiden had barely any knowledge about. He had never seen John's friends, never spoken to other parents, never been to his school. The streets still were empty, sun still shining. It looked alright for a while, but when Rose lead the way through a narrow path, it suddenly looked like a battlefield.

Rose was only slightly surprised by the lack of reaction when he saw the destruction. Of course he had seen similar things before. It was nothing new to him, but she couldn't get used to it. In the past day she had went here dozens of times, looked around, tried to find John, or anyone who was still alive. Medics and all kinds of people were digging through rubble, trying to find survivors. Rose had briefly helped earlier, but she soon couldn't take it anymore and retreated.

Her husband tensed at the sight of all the people. Rose knew why, and she wished they wouldn't stare at him as much as they did the moment they saw him. Some knew him, others knew he lived there, some were surprised or disgusted. She grabbed his hand when he turned around to leave.

"Please, Jack..."

"Rose..." he argued. "I'll look somewhere else..."

"Think about John..."

"He could have run away!"

While Rose tried to find some argument that would work, a man was walking towards them. "Hey Rosemary. You feeling better now?"

"Yes, thank you, Dan." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.

The man had gray hair, tanned, brown eyes. A little chubby, friendly face. He had dirty gloves on, his gray t-shirt was drenched in sweat.

"And you must be Jack." The man concluded with a big smile and removed the right glove to shake hands with Raiden.

Raiden stared at him, totally baffled at the friendly gesture from a total stranger. It took him a moment to realize that he wanted to shake hands and a little longer for him to actually do the motion.

The man heartily patted Raiden's shoulder. "No need to be shy, kid! John's friends with my son."

Raiden flinched, both at the touch and the words of the man. He wanted to leave here as soon as possible.

" Anything new?" Rosemary then asked to take the focus away from her husband. At any other time she would have loved to push him a little, but today wasn't the right time for that.

"We found two kids, both alive, but neither of them was John or Tyler... " The man sighed. "I'm sure they hid away somewhere safe."

Rose shook her head with a sigh, glanced at Raiden who had inched away from the man and was now glaring at the rubble in front of him. He cursed silently and held a hand to his ear and talked to whoever he had called.

Sometimes Rose disliked that she couldn't see what he was seeing. He had tried to explain it to her as some sort of interface, using one of John's video games as example. She got a general idea, but she couldn't imagine having images in front of her eyes that didn't actually exist. When she asked him if he was bothered by it he had smiled. _'Sometimes,'_ He had replied.

"He's a shy one, isn't he?" Dan asked Rose.

Rose sighed. She had no idea what to reply. He had always shut other's out, no one should know about him or his past. Rose had been shocked to learn that the people he had fought used his own weakness against him. Of course she didn't know half of it, but she could imagine what had happened. Her husband usually didn't call her after a mission, the fact that he did that a few weeks ago, showed her that he really needed someone to talk to. She was somehow happy that it was her.

"He's a good guy, I can see that in his eyes. Too bad he you never really get to talk to him. Really a shame." Dan  nodded to himself. "I better get back now though, hope you'll find John alive and well." With that he walked back to the others.

Thank you, Dan. Hope you find Tyler as well."

Dan just smiled sadly at her and walked back to the others. Rose used the chance to walk up to Raiden. She couldn't hear what the person on the other side of the call said, but she listened to her Husband.

"Anything will do." He said. "Of course he doesn't have any cyborg parts, Courtney! What kind of person do you take me for?!"

Courtney. Rose only knew her by name. She was one of the few people he worked with. And apparently she had managed to make him angry.

"I know that would make it easier! Just try to find out anything!" He had ended the call then, as he turned to Rose. There was nothing left of the fear and worry. It was replaced by determination and anger.

"They'll look into it. I also sent Hal a message." He told her. "He's on some sort of science fair with Sunny in Sydney."

"That's pretty close."

"Coincidence. I wasn't going to be here until Tuesday..." He sighed.

"You think they can do something?" She asked in confusion.

He shrugged. "They can at least try to find out who launched that attack."

Rose nodded. "What will you do if they find it out?"

Raiden didn't hesitate one second. "First we find John. Then we can look into other things."

She wasn't sure what this feeling inside her was, maybe it was pride. Then she mentally slapped herself. Of course John came before anything.

Raiden's head suddenly snapped up and her pushed Rose behind her. "Missile! Run!" He shouted over to the people still busy at the destroyed houses. "Run!" he repeated, then grabbed Roses arm and dragged her away from the site. Rose stumbled after him, only heard the earsplitting sound of a missile, she had never heard it so close. And just seconds later there was an explosion.

Raiden pulled Rose in front of him when the heat of the shockwave hit them. Pain flared up in his sensors but he kept his mouth shut. This body was so inconvenient for battles and similar things.

"Jack...!" Rose almost screamed, covered her mouth and nose with her shirt and held on to her husband with her free hand. She couldn't see anything in the thick smoke. It bit into her eyes, made them water. There also was the heat all around them. It was almost unbearable. He was swaying for a moment, but he continued to walk and pulled her along. She had lost one of her slippers, but couldn't care less about them.

"I'll get you somewhere safe then I'll look for John." He told her in a stern voice, it was lower than usual.

"Jack, you can't just-"

"I can." He growled back and excited the alley they've been walking through. The smoke cleared slowly and after a few more minutes they had reached the car Raiden had rented. She climbed into the passenger's seat and took a deep breath when she put the seatbelt on. Raiden sat down next to her, slammed the door shut and started the engine. She had no time to prepare for the rough driving style that followed. The tires screeched over the asphalt, leaving marks.

Rose hit her head on the window. "Jack!" She shouted as she held her head. "Can't you drive like a normal person?!"

He shot her a glare, but slowed the car down a bit. There was an apology on his lips, but he didn't say it.

"Where are we going?" Rose asked after she had recovered from the bump on her head. It wasn't anything serious, it didn't even hurt, but she had been surprised to be jolted around like a ragdoll.

He chose not to reply and instead called someone yet again. Rose stared at the landscape, wondered if her neighbors were alright. Her husband had warned them, but was it enough time for everyone to get away?

"Can Sunny do repairs?" He asked whoever he had called.

Rose frowned, then eyed her husband a little closer. The back of his shirt was charred, some of the artificial skin too. Something silvery seemed to shimmer through some of the burns and his hair seemed significantly shorter in the back than just a few minutes ago. She should have been grateful that she didn't get any major injuries. The scratch on her ankle was barely bleeding.

He got hurt for her sake. She shivered at the thought, but at the same time she was strangely grateful. Burns hurt. She knew it from all the countless times she had accidentally burned herself when she cooked.

"Alright, I'll find a place to stay until then."

Raiden ended the call and found Rose glaring daggers at him. He sighed deeply. "It's just minor damage." He tried to explain.

"But-"

"It's just on the surface. My systems are running fine, nothing important got damaged."

Rose nodded, tried to believe him. But something in his face made her question his words. He had glued his eyes on the road, teeth biting down on his lower lip as he sped through the town to wherever their destination was.

"But it hurts." Rose concluded after a while.

"I'll be fine."

"Jack..."

He looked at her for a brief moment before his eyes wandered back to the road. "This body doesn't have pain inhibitors." He explained.

He knew she didn't like it, didn't have to look at her for that. "It's not made for fighting..." he continued silently.

His wife nodded and stayed silent. She was exhausted. The stench of burned hair and artificial skin made her nauseous and she kept questioning why id had to be John of all people. The boy could be anywhere, or buried under the buildings. Dead, injured maybe, crying for his parents. Tears welled up in her eyes but she quickly wiped them away.

"I'm... always getting you in trouble..." She heard her husband say.

"We don't even know who launched the attack."

"What if-"

"Jack, no." Rose said firmly and sat up straight. "We don't know who attacked and we don't know why."

He swallowed his reply and kept focusing on the road. He wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, just be left alone, forget what had happened, not think about it anymore. He had enough of this. Whatever he got caught in, it always ended in a terrible mess. Was it all just coincidence? Or was he the cause for all of it? Wouldn't it be better to just leave his family alone then?

They spent the rest of the drive in silence, Rose dozed off and Raiden brooded over what could have been and what should have been.

When they reached a small abandoned motel an hour later, Rose had fallen completely asleep and Raiden killed the engine and placed his head on the steering wheel. The pain was unpleasant but nothing he couldn't ignore. He had endured worse. His thoughts hurt more. Way more.

 _Tear apart whoever is responsible for this. Kill them in the most gruesome way possible._  A voice in his head muttered.

"Go away." He whispered.

_They deserve to be murdered._

"Shut up!" he hissed at the voice.

_They even hurt Rose. Who knows what they did with John?_

Raiden got out of the car, didn't want to wake Rose with this monologue. The voice continued to growl nonsense at him and in the end he punched a tree so hard that the artificial skin tore and fine streaks of blood ran over his hand. It made the voice go away at least.

"Stay in your fucking box." He growled at the tree. "I don't need you."

 


	4. Shadows of the past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the angst begins. This one scene was so clear in my head I couldn't shake it off.  
> Please be prepared for some body horror.

Raiden turned around to face the car when he heard the passenger's side door open. Rose stood between the door and the car, looked at him with an expression between fear and worry.

"Jack, where are we?" She asked silently, her voice taking a slight edge as if she didn't trust him.

"Hal's picking you up here." He replied silently, unsure of how to talk to her at the moment. He was sure she hadn't heard him talk to himself, but he was afraid she might know what was going on anyway. After all, she knew about ' _Jack_ '. But she hadn't seen him in action and he didn't want her to.

"Hal? Why?"

"I want you at a safe place."

Rose's features hardened and anger spread over them. "I didn't ask you to decide for me."

"Rose-"

"No." She hissed back at him. "I can decide on my own, and this is about **our** son. I want to find him as much as you do, and you have absolutely no right to exclude me from this!"

He just looked at her, let her yell and tried to stifle the anger that was rising inside him. Rose had all right to be angry but if it kept her safe, anything would do.

"Hal is on his way already." He just told her.

"I don't care!"

"You're being childish."

She scoffed. "And what are you now?! Mature?!"

"I don't want to lose you too."

And that had her running around the car and in front of him in less than two seconds. She raised her hand and the loud slap echoed through the almost empty field. He took a step backwards, not because it threw him off balance but because he was surprised.

"You're talking as if he's dead already!" she shouted at him, her yell echoing in the field.

The slap hadn't hurt on a physical level, no. It went deeper than that. He had hit her once, a long time ago, absolutely her own fault, but he still hated himself for it. This was the second time she had slapped him. He couldn't remember why she did it the first time.

Rose's eyes widened and she took down her hand, an apologetic look on her face. "Jack... I'm... I didn't mean..."

He shook his head and turned away from her as if he couldn't take looking at her any longer. Rose now got a clear view of the damage done to his back. She could see the silver exoskeleton below the burned artificial skin. It made her painfully aware of him not having a human body anymore. She had seen it before, uncovered at the time, differently shaped.

Back when she used any kind of excuse to disturb Roy when he was having conversations with David or Hal, just to get a glimpse at her husband. She had been worried, but trusted in their ability to help him sufficiently. Getting him to trust her again had been a different story. It took a long time, and they still didn't get any more intimate than a kiss and a hug. He was disgusted at his body, and he didn't trust her on that level anymore, she knew it even when he didn't say it.

Someone cleared their throat awkwardly behind them and both turned. The sun was starting to set, dark clouds hanging over them. The man in the beige trench coat next to a silver car waved at them shyly.

"Uhm... I came to pick you up?" his voice made it clear how nervous he was as he shoved the glasses back up in a well trained motion, something he didn't have to think about. It happened automatically.

Rose crossed her arms when she recognized him. "I'm not coming."

"Rose!" Raiden argued.

Hal sighed. "I'm sorry."

Rose glared at him, then at Raiden. "You can't just throw me out of this!" she repeated.

"Please Rose..."

The woman grumbled something, then took a deep breath and climbed into Hal's car. But that didn't mean she didn't keep glaring daggers at her husband. When he turned around she rolled down her window and leaned out. "If you get hurt I will beat you up." She threatened.

He didn't make a remark about that. Rose was extremely agitated and worn out. It didn't surprise him much that she acted like this. She would probably apologize sooner or later anyway. Now that she was out of his hair he went back to the other car, got in and drove back to their house. On the way he called Maverick.

"Good news on your end?" Kevin asked silently the moment he had taken the call.

"No. Did you find out anything?"

There was a short silence. "We dug up some data about recent sightings of missiles. Two reports match with the attacks earlier."

Raiden sighed, stopped at a red traffic light and resisted the urge to slam the dashboard in two.

"Seems they originated from an old military base that has been closed for decades."

"Where is it?"

"Raiden, you can't possibly-"

"They might be responsible for my son's death, and if John's still alive, they're still at fault for killing other people!"

Kevin was silent once more. "You can't fight like that!" he tried to argue.

"I have a spare HF-Blade at home."

"That's not what I meant! The body, you're-"

"I know, Kev." Raiden shook his head to himself. "It's interesting to have this feeling again. Of having to watch my every move." He shrugged. "Almost feels human again."

Kevin made a displeased sound. "None of us would be there in time to save your sorry ass."

"I know."

"You won't stop until you find that base, huh?"

"Of course not." Raiden growled.

Kevin sighed in annoyance relayed the coordinates to him, but made it very clear that he shouldn't do anything reckless. They both knew that Raiden was going to do it anyway. He was like that. Stubborn like a child.

"I swear if you're not in one piece and out of harm's way tomorrow, I'll personally come beat you up."

Raiden almost laughed now. "I'm not doing this since yesterday."

"I know. Just be careful, alright? Who knows what's in there..."

The cyborg kept the reply to himself, sighed and ended the call. When he reached the house again he went straight for the basement, took one of the spare blades and one of the old guns that had ended up there. He hoped he wouldn't have to use either of them, but he knew that was wishful thinking.

When he went upstairs to get a new shirt, he heard the crunching sound of  breaking apart Lego bricks below his shoes. He stopped counting how often this had happened. John left his Lego all over the first floor and he had stepped on it so often, John didn't even bother to get angry anymore. He just collected the parts, put them back together and kept playing. Raiden had to give these things some credit, he hadn't yet managed to break a single brick. That didn't include some of the more delicate parts though, he had glued a lot of those back together in the past.

Carefully he shoved the constructions aside to gain access to the bedroom and took the first shirt he could find. It was a black button up shirt, but he would have taken anything else too. It wouldn't be visible on the coat he was going to wear anyway. He dug through he closet, found the object in question on a hanger on the far left, neatly packed into a plastic back. It had been a while since he had worn that thing. It brought memories back of fights long won, people he'd never see again.

There wouldn't be someone saving his ass in this. He was alone, vulnerable and for a strange reason, it filled him with a strange form of excitement and satisfaction. When he closed the black coat and grabbed the sheath of the blade he shook his head slightly.  What was he doing here? Why was he doing it? The police could have found the boy by now. He could also be dead, waiting to be identified. Raiden felt like he needed to do this, otherwise he'd go completely mad. What was left of his sanity anyway? At times like this he almost longed for Snake's wise words, words of which he still didn't know if they were true or not.

Would Rose get mad when she found out that he was going after the attackers rather than look for John? Then again, she didn't have to find out. Maybe he could spare some time if he found who had attacked.

It felt strange to strap she sheath of the blade to his back, got used to the nice little gadget attached to the combat body. He needed to get the skin replaced too. The unpleasant tingling was worse now that he had the scraping fabric over it. He couldn't do anything about it though. This skin wouldn't heal. It didn't have the technology for that. He felt bad for using Sunny as an excuse to get Rose out of harm's way, but the Girl would be alright with that.

When he turned around and looked back into the hallway, he wondered he if would ever see John play there again. He shoved that thought aside and headed downstairs, back to the car.

Lightning flashed up in the sky as thin threads of rain poured down on the roads like waterfalls. Thunder roared not much later.

 _What a fitting weather._ A voice in his head muttered.

"Go away." Raiden growled and concentrated on the road.

The military base had been closed so long, it didn't even seem to have a name anymore. He didn't even know it had existed until Kevin told him. It was way up in the north, somewhere in the middle of a forest. That's what the GPS in the car said. Almost four hours to get there. Still, It was better than staying with Rose and go nuts.

He hoped to learn who had launched the attack, but even finding out something that lead him to John would satisfy him for now.

The codec rang after a while. It was a welcome distraction after seeing nothing but trees and empty fields for miles. The curvy road needed his full concentration at times, but right now he was driving on a straight patch of asphalt down an empty highway.

"Jack..." he heard Roses voice. "They found Tyler. He was injured  and unconscious but he'll pull through. John might be fine after all..."

She sounded so hopeless, so tired and desperate.

"Alright." He muttered, not sure what else to say. At least John's friend was safe? He didn't even know that boy. If it calmed Rose, that was great. He wasn't thrilled by the new information though.

"Be careful... I'm waiting for you to come back." She added as if she knew he wasn't looking for John. Maybe she did. She had used the same trick to keep him going in the big shell. "I love you."

He ended the call without giving her a reply. She knew he would. He hadn't said those words in years. Couldn't bring himself to do it. He did love her, but something deep inside still didn't trust her. He knew what she was capable of when she really wanted to hurt someone, be it intentional or not. It was better not to get on her bad side. Maybe he was afraid she would do it again. Wasn't she just manipulating him? Like she always did? A decade had passed and he still couldn't trust her the same way anymore.

He spent the drive in almost complete silence, just the radio playing silently in the background. It had some charts playing, music he didn't like much, but it was better than listening to the voice in his head. It also kept him from drifting off in his thoughts.

 The only thing that illuminated the road were the headlights of the car, the occasional car that drove past him on the other side and some motels scattered at the sides with miles in between.

The attack was all over the news, assumptions, facts, theories. Everything got mixed together. Apparently over twelve people were still missing. John one of them. Raiden shoved the feeling aside. He'd rip whoever had launched that thing to shreds, he wouldn't even need _Jack_ for that. No one hurt his family and got away with it.

 No one.

It was just past nine when he arrived at the dark forest. He parked the car between bushes, got out and looked around. He should have packed a flashlight, this body wasn't great in the darkness. He slowly made his way through fallen trees and bushes as silent as possible. He  hadn't needed these techniques in a long time. It took a moment to remember. Doing this in a town was easier and faster. A forest was dangerous and the chance to be spotted was higher. One wrong move could give the position away. A forest didn't forgive mistakes.

He turned on the Radar when he almost ran into a tree. It was quite basic and didn't show much, but he could see the building he was looking for somewhere far off in the distance. That thing could hardly be called a radar anyway. It wasn't supposed to be used like the one in his combat body. He sometimes used it as a GPS, but usually kept it off like the HUD. He didn't want images interfering with his vision when he was around his family. In battle it was necessary, but at home there was no reason to use it.

The first thing he noticed when he finally reached the building, was that it was too small to be a military base. His second thought was that it would be underground then. He also didn't see any lights. That didn't have to mean anything, someone could have expected his arrival after all.

He drew the blade, made sure the gun was quickly accessible if needed and headed of the door. It was made of metal, rusted and old, but didn't make a single sound when he opened it. He would have expected it to creak and scream. Someone must have oiled it recently. Inside it was dark, the radar showed him a basic rectangle room, nothing else.

"Raiden?" came Courtney's voice over the codec. "You turned the radar on..." she yawned, must have fallen asleep at the desk again. Maybe she had just taken a nap.

"It's pitch black here, I don't see anything." He whispered.

"Right..." she sighed. "The body..." she stretched and yawned once more, then reached for her coffee and sat up straight.

"Well, the building is supposed to be abandoned."

"Doesn't change the fact that the missiles came from here."

"Don't you have a flashlight?"

"Didn't think about it."

She sighed. "You're hopeless." The smile in her voice gave away that she wasn't being serious, maybe it was an understanding smile. "Alright, it seems to have been some underground base. They didn't do much there except store ammunition and things like that. At least from what is listed here. There should be a hatch that leads to the lower floors."

"Thanks." He muttered, using the wall to find said hatch. It didn't take long as the room wasn't big and his eyes were assaulted by bright neon lights the moment he opened it.

He made a displeased sound but climbed down the ladder anyway, mindful not to make any sound. The room he reached was empty except for a table and a chair. Paper was thrown all across the table and the floor as if someone had left in a hurry. Some of the papers were charred as if someone tried to burn them. He looked at them for a moment. None of it made sense to him.

"Notes." Courtney concluded. "But for what?"

Raiden picked the fallen ones up and placed them on the table. Random notes, numbers, short sentences. It seemed to be random, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it should make sense.

"You getting all that, Courtney?"

"Nice and clear. We'll try to figure out what they mean."

Raiden nodded to himself and turned around to face the door on the far end of the small room. A flashlight was lying on the floor next to it. He picked it up, tested if it worked and squeezed it into his belt. He could use that once he headed back to the car.

"Well now you got the flashlight." Kevin laughed as he sat down in his seat and put on his headset. "Be careful, it seems someone has been there not too long ago."

"I know." Raiden sighed and slowly opened the door, ready to jump into action, but the long corridor behind it was gaping, dark, and seemingly empty.

"God I hate dark places." He hissed almost soundlessly and silently inched forward when he turned on the flashlight and illuminated the path in front of him.

"Anything on the papers yet?" he asked, hoped they would just keep talking for a bit longer.

"Nope." Kevin said. "I'm on it."

"Good."

Raiden held his breath for a moment, listened, and continued to walk. It really seemed that no one was there. The walls were wet and moldy, concrete fractured at places, and there were lots of locked and rusted doors. At the far end he finally found a door that was open and it screamed and squeaked like he would expect from a rusted door. Whoever had been here didn't care about the sounds they made down here.

A chill crept around him, the temperature significantly lower than in the corridor. The room was illuminated by blue light that originated from six giant cylindrical shaped tubes at the side. He felt like he had seen something similar not long ago. Dok had told him these things were used to ensure whatever organic part was placed in there, wouldn't cease to function as quickly as it would without it.

"The papers seem to belong to a scientist who worked for the patriots." Kevin suddenly said.

Raiden flinched. "What?!"

"There's no name, but it hints at it. Be careful, buddy."

Nausea crept up on him. Now the patriots were part of this?! He swallowed hard and slowly walked closer to the tubes. His body was tingling, trembling slightly. He felt awful just from the simple mention of their name.

"It seems that they moved their research to this base." Kevin continued after a moment, voice slow as if he was reading while talking. "It might be some scientist who just couldn't let go?"

Raiden didn't hear him when he was standing in front of the tubes. They seemed to have different functions than the one he had seen back at the lab where he found George and the other kids. A thin layer of condensed water was casted over the glass, but he could clearly see shapes behind that. He used his shirt to wipe a portion of the first tube clear so he could look inside. He held his breath then. It was a human torso frozen in place, no head, no limbs, just the plain torso of a dark skinned man.

"God..." Courtney muttered.

Raiden went to the next tube, wiped the glass and found another torso. He was sort of glad it had no head, he knew he wouldn't be able to take the face of a dead person staring at him right now. He could tell by the shapes of the next two that they held a torso as well, so he didn't bother looking into it, the fifth seemed empty while the sixth seemed to hold a whole body without a head.

When he swiped his shirt over the glass it certainly revealed what he had expected. A pale body was in there, almost white as snow, but that wasn't what made him stare at it in shock. The head was gone, removed from the lower lip and the rest of the body. He stumbled backwards, got his feet caught in a chair and fell on his rear, taking the chair with him.

"Buddy, what's wrong?" He heard Kevin, but he couldn't open his mouth to reply.

The nausea got to the point where he thought he'd throw up right then and there.

"Raiden!" Courtney then almost shouted. "What's going on?!"

The cyborg stared at the tube a moment longer, unable to calm his panting breath.

"It's just a body..." Kevin tried. "Of a grown man."

"Who had weird tastes in tattoos." Courtney tried to joke, loosen the tense mood a bit, but she met a concrete wall.

"This..." Raiden tried. His mind was racing, his head spinning, he felt sick to the core and was trembling so badly he couldn't gather the strength to get up again. He swallowed once more, took a deep breath. "This..." he tried again but couldn't say it. It was absurd and absolutely terrifying at the same time.

It took an incredible effort to tear his gaze away from the tube, but the image lingered.

"Get out of there, immediately." Boris suddenly said over the Codec. "Go find your boy."

Raiden shook his head, unable to voice a reply.

"Raiden..." Boris' voice took on a softer tone, one he rarely used. "Get out of there. If you get attacked you have no chance." This time it was an order.

Once Raiden had gathered enough strength to get back to his feet, he leaned against the wall, flinched at the burns protesting, closed his eyes and tried to chase away the nausea, or at least the dizziness. Maybe only calming his racing heart would have been enough. He had clenched his fists, released them on occasion and did it again. Something Rose had told him about once, it was supposed to calm him down, but it wasn't effective at the moment.

Surprised at the sudden wetness streaming over his cheeks he reached for his face,  gasped when he realized that it were tears. He didn't know what brought it on, he didn't feel like crying at all. He had only been angry, shocked, surprised.

"Raiden..." Courtney said silently, tried to put as much comfort into her voice as she could.

He couldn't answer, he was sure he'd break down completely if he just said one word of the things that were racing in his mind.

"I'm... I'm going back..." he stuttered, slowly made his way back to the door and almost crashed into the wall.

The dark corridor seemed endless, dark thoughts seemed to swarm him from the concrete walls. The room with the papers looked like he had left it, but he didn't pay attention to it at all. He was calming down slowly, but his heart was still racing, the image still burned into his mind. He knew he wouldn't forget it. Never.

Back at the car he bit his lip. "I turn of the codec... I need to be alone for a moment..." he whispered, shut off the radar and the codec with it.

He slowly opened the door to the car and climbed inside, the soft light making all this seem less of a horror than it had been. When he shut the door he let go of the tears he barely held back. It all crashed down on him at once, John missing, the attacks, now the patriots and that terrifying room.

 

It took almost an hour until he had calmed down again, was exhausted and had a splitting headache but he could deal with that. He didn't want to go back there, but he felt like he had to. And he also owed Kevin and Courtney an explanation for his behavior.

When he turned to codec back on, Courtney was the first who spoke. "You okay? Can I do anything?"

"No and... No." he forced a smile, took a deep breath.

"...Boris seemed kind of worried too." Kevin muttered.

Both him and Courtney looked a little paler than usual. Worry was clear in their faces. Raiden was grateful to have these two has his friends and not just colleagues.

"I'm ... sorry for that." Raiden apologized. He felt embarrassed.

"Don't." Kevin sighed. "Look, we all have moment when it just all gets too much, you know? We're just glad you didn't run into anyone."

"It's not that, Kev." The Cyborg muttered. "The body..." his voice was cracking now. "I don't know... how it ended up there... I was..." he bit his lip, flexed his fingers and gripped the steering wheel as he closed his eyes and tried to find the right words. "I... thought it was disposed of..."

Courtney frowned, Kevin seemed to slowly catch on what Raiden was hinting at.

"...It was like staring into a mirror..."

Courtney made a sound that wasn't really a word. She seemed to be wanted to say something but couldn't bring herself to it.

"You've seen it too." Raiden now said, trying to make them realize it without actually saying it. He let out a long breath.

Now it dawned on Courtney and the woman covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh god..."

"...Your..." Kevin muttered, eyes wide. "It was yours...?"

Raiden didn't reply, but he didn't have to.

They knew now.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am totally blown away by all the people who clicked on this fic and gave Kudos and waaaah! You guys make my day.

He stared at the darkness in the car and the forest, shock and surprise still lingering. He had to get back in there, there had been another door next to the tubes, who knew what it would reveal. With a deep breath he ended the codec call of Courtney and Kevin and called Rose.

She picked up as if she had waited.

"Rose..." he said, his voice trembling. "I..."

"What's wrong?" she sounded alarmed. "Did you get injured?"

"No... not physically." He sighed and leaned back in the seat, grimacing at the sting of the burns on his back. The pain was a welcome distraction from his racing thoughts though.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Her voice was calm, professional now.

He hesitated. "No... I... I just saw something..."

"Something that disturbed you? What was it?"

"A body..." he hissed, dropped his head on the steering wheel and wrapped his arms around it as the nausea came back.

He couldn't recall the last time he had felt this vulnerable... this _human_.

"Someone you know?" He could hear that Rose was struggling with the words. She tried hard to keep it up, but he knew she was making assumptions in the back of her head.

"It wasn't John, don't worry." He quickly said. "But someone... I..." he swallowed hard. "Someone I... should know."

"Can you tell me who?"

"Me, Rose! Me!" he shouted, felt tears burn in his eyes again. "It... it was mine..."

Rose was silent for a long moment. Long enough that he was sure she had heard his terrible attempts at forcing the tears back. It took so much to get actual tears out of him, but he couldn't stop them at all this time.

"It's okay to cry, Jack." She told him silently, reassuring him. "This was a shocking experience, it is absolutely okay."

Her voice was trembling now, yet she tried so hard to keep it professional. She knew she was the only one who would be of any help to him at the moment. It would have been easier if she was closer. It wasn't rare for him to break down when he was at home, but it had different reasons and he usually got angry then.

Raiden took in a shaking breath and forced himself to calm down. This was how it was, he couldn't change it.

"I'm sorry, Rose..." he whispered.

She was about to say something, and he knew it would be a retort, something about him using her as a tool, but she didn't. "Will you be okay on your own? I come pick you up if you want me to."

"No, it's okay." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt.

"If it gets too much just come back, do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Hang on a second." Rose muttered. She was silent for a moment, then sighed. "Sunny said her dog ran away..."

"Dog... Wolf?" Raiden frowned. Wolf was pretty loyal to Sunny. It didn't seem right that he would run away.

"Raiden?" The voice of the girl suddenly said. "Wolf is gone. We took him with us to the hotel and he was in my room. But then I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was gone."

"Hey Sunny." Raiden forced his voice to sound friendlier and less worn out. Sunny didn't have to know what was going on. "I don't know where he could be. I'm over 200 miles away from your location."

Sunny sighed. "I knoooow." She sounded annoyed. "He just never did that before!"

"He's his own 'person'. I'm sure he'll come back."

"Okay." Sunny smiled. "I hope you find John... Be careful!"

Sunny ended the call and he sat in the car a few more minutes, trying to get his priorities back in check. John was more important, and this building might be a key to his location. His personal issues had no place in this, whether it was work or not. He shook his head, took the flashlight and  got out of the car.

"Are you really going back?" Courtney asked once she had the video feed back.

"I'm okay now." It was a lie so bad, that everyone must have caught up on it. There was no remark about it though. Everyone still seemed shaken about what had happened earlier.

"Raiden," Boris started silently. "We can send someone else-"

"No. I have to do this." Raiden interrupted and walked back to the building. He tried to forget about the strange room when he climbed back down the ladder, ignored the dark corridor and just slipped through the Room with the Tubes without looking at them. Another corridor followed. It was as dark as the other one and it had lots of locked doors as well.

Like with the last corridor he tried every door and was surprised to find the third one open. It wasn't even closed completely. The room had machinery in the middle of it, big enough to hold missiles.

Silently he slipped in and hid in a corner of the room close to the door. The room seemed to be empty, no footsteps to be heard, though the low hum if the machines could drown out pretty much any quiet sound. He took a deep breath and inched forward, mindful not to bump into chairs and any of the objects on the floor. Books, paper, food cans that looked ancient. At the corner of the machine he halted and peeked around. There was no one to be seen.

Since no one was there, he began to ponder about the other room. It didn't make sense. This body couldn't be there at all. Not in once piece. It shouldn't be. He had been so shocked that he didn't really think about the details and whoever had displayed this here had either a morbid sense of humor, **or** expected him to come here, perhaps to throw him off guard. And that had worked marvelous.

"It doesn't make sense." He eventually relayed to Kevin while he walked around in the room. "The body I mean."

"How so?" Kevin replied silently.

"It shouldn't be here." He said casually. "Actually, It can't be."

"You mean it's a set up? A trick maybe?"

Raiden scoffed. "Definitely. Someone expected me. And they knew things others didn't. If this is a coincidence I'll eat a broom."

"I don't think I know any restaurant that serves them." Courtney replied. This time she succeeded with the joke.

Raiden scoffed. "If this building really was used by patriot scientists. They'd have the data they need to set this up."

"It could be a hologram or something like that? You could go check." Courtney muttered.

"Later." Raiden said when he carefully opened a door on the far end of the room to find yet another dark corridor. "This place is a freaking maze."

Courtney sighed. He could hear her typing away on her keyboard, then she sighed again and stretched. "There's no floor-plan of anything besides the rooms you've been in so far..."

"Getting lost and running in circles." He growled to himself, flicked on the flashlight and walked down the corridor. A dark and empty room greeted him at the end of this corridor. This time the room wasn't even properly furnished.

The door slammed shut behind him and he could hear something click behind the walls. The flashlight didn't reveal anything unusual on the walls, and concrete walls shouldn't make sounds at all anyway. He was starting to get a really bad feeling about this whole building.

The dark room held a shelf and another door on the far end. Whoever had designed this place seemed like they wanted others to get lost here. As he headed for the door, he wondered if he had walked into a trap. It seemed too easy.

"Kev, is there really no floor-plan anywhere?"

"Can't find any. I'll keep trying."

Raiden nodded to himself, opened the door and peeked into yet another dark corridor.

 _This is a trap, kid._ He heard someone say in his head. It wasn't _Jack_ this time. Raiden smirked at it and used the flashlight to look around the next corridor. It didn't look unusual, but he could still hear the clicking noise inside the walls. It could be a bomb, something else too.

 It could be harmless. _It could be a trap, kid._

"I know, I know..." he whispered at the voice. He thought about telling Rose about this. By now he was used to talk to _Jack_ on occasion, it was just a portion of his conscience, the one without the morals or restrictions. Yet this voice was new. Maybe he was just remembering some words, or wished someone said them to him.

"Nope. Nothing on the floor plans." Kevin sighed. "Are you sure you didn't run in circles though?"

"Not yet." Raiden replied.

"Alright, buddy."

Raiden carefully stepped into the corridor, this door slammed shut as well and it appeared to be locked when he tried to open it again. The clicking stopped for a moment, then something whizzed past him and hit the wall on the other side. As he turned to look more objects flew past him.

He drew the blade and blocked as many of the little things he could, unable to grasp what they actually were. They seemed to be made of metal but were too slow and long to be bullets. Bolts maybe. He didn't care, just knew he was trapped in this room and probably needed to get to the other side to get out of this corridor.

One of the objects clattered to the ground and rolled past his shoes. It looked like a bolt of a crossbow, definitely long enough to injure a normal person quite serious too. He tried to wait for a while, these walls couldn't have infinite ammunition, but even after two minutes of watching the bolts whizzing by and deflecting the stray ones, it didn't seem to stop anytime soon. The floor was covered by them, and he sighed.

Eventually he rammed his blade into the wall, hoped to hit whatever powered this machine but to no avail. The mechanism just happily continued what it was doing. He wasn't eager to run through this mess, but it was clear to him now that he had no choice.

He eyed the bolts for a moment, tried to memorize the speed and time in between and made a run for it. He had almost reached the door on the other side, sliced some bolts in half and reached out to it when one of the bolts lodged itself into his left shoulder. A muffled sound came over his lips, the pain unexpected and surprising. He spent no second thought on that when he ripped open the door and jumped into the next room, hoping that nothing would wait for him behind it. He room was pitch black except for the light of the flash light. There was no clicking sound either, only silence and darkness. He used the light to get a better view on the bolt in his shoulder and grunted. It was stuck between the joint where the arm connected to his body. With a growl he yanked it out, grateful that the arm was still fully functional.

"You okay?" Kevin asked silently.

"Yeah... Can't go back the same way, I'll try to find a different route."

"Be careful, buddy."

Raiden sighed. He was tired and exhausted, both mentally and physically. There was a was a door on the left, boxes and shelves on the right and a gaping hole in the ceiling. It looked like it had been made for something to pass through.

He couldn't spend another thought on it when suddenly bright lights flashed up and blinded him for a few seconds. He then saw a person, or something close to a person jump from the hole in the ceiling into the middle of the room.

It was heavily armored, taller than him by at least two heads, broad, heavy and quite tough looking with all the metal it was covered in. He couldn't tell if it was a Cyborg or a UG, but it wanted trouble. that was for sure when it took something that looked like a heavily modified machinegun from its back and aimed it at Raiden. The _thing_ was too big to go through the door, however, Raiden was almost certain that it would chase him. Maybe it knew another route and would just wait for him in a different room.

The flashlight shattered when he jumped to the side to dodge the bullet the thing had shot at him. It seemed to be reinforced with some sort of technology that made it spark and sizzle when it hit the wall and left nothing but a small mark. Raiden wasn't sure if this could even go through the exoskeleton, but he wasn't eager to try it out. It seemed to be powered by electricity and getting shocked could shut down the whole system.  He dodged a whole salve of the bullets, unable to get any closer to the robot like things that seemed to follow his every move. There was no opening.

What was the point of this thing? Was it there to tire him out? He was tired already!

He dived below the bullets and managed to slice at the legs, though it left nothing but a small mark. Remembering his own gun he  rolled to the side to get some distance between him and the mechanical-whatever it was. The pattern seemed to be programmed, it had to be a UG then.

Raiden aimed the gun at what appeared to be the head of the UG, all while still dodging and rolling out of the way of the bullets. His first two shots missed, the third hit. The UG howled in an inhuman voice and struggled to stand for a moment. When it had recovered it began to Chase Raiden across the room, using the machinegun to try and hit him with it. It was slow and predictable, But Raiden felt exhaustion creeping over him. He knew he wouldn't last much longer.

Gripping the blade tighter he sliced at the machinegun the next time it was in reach, but did almost no damage to it. He had been backed into a corner of the room, used a shelf to toss it at the UG, but the thing was unimpressed and just walked over it.

Raiden ducked away from the next hit, lunged at the UG's feet in hopes to make it fall. He was flung into the wall a heartbeat later.

His vision was distorted for a moment, images flickering. It didn't help the headache either. Growling he got back to his feet, skipped to the right to avoid getting shot and was struck in the back by something else. He stumbled, turned to see that the UG had picked up the remains of the shelf and used it to hit him.

It was damn smart for an UG.

His system was flashing warnings at him now, this had damaged some of the exoskeleton. Not on a dangerous level, yet, but he knew he shouldn't get hit like that again. His back was mostly unprotected from the burns earlier anyway. He shoved the warnings away and jumped backwards when the UG slammed the shelf into the ground. Raiden used that moment to run up to the UG and finally got close enough to damage it sufficiently. He didn't hesitate when he sliced the head off the thing, another mechanical howl followed.

Raiden backed away when it fell to the ground, twitching and sizzling as the energy faded. He was panting, his head still hurting. When the thing was finally still he turned around to face the door and was struck in the back yet again by something that had him yell before he realized it. He felt his knees buckle and he crashed into the concrete ground like a rock, unable to move even a finger as his systems went offline for a split second.

EMP. he realized, after his vision cleared again. His ears were ringing and it was difficult to breathe for a moment.

 He was grateful that this body was even able to force a restart after this, though he assumed that it only forced the life supporting systems back online as soon as possible and worked on the others later. He could have very well died here just now.

He wheezed in a futile attempt to get up again. His communication was cut, he couldn't contact anyone or get out of there. He had no idea how long it would take for the effect to wear off either. Maybe something had gotten damaged too. He got slapped in the face with one error message after the other. There was nothing he could do about it either. He barely had any knowledge about the system. By now he was able to get rid of a few glitches, after Dok had explained how to of course. Some glitches just happened and it was more or less impossible to get them out, but this was too much to handle. The cryptic messages didn't even make sense to him anymore.

While he pondered what to do now, he heard the terrible clicking noise again. If these bolts appeared here too now, he wouldn't have a chance.

Suddenly the door on the other side sprang open, Raiden could only see a portion of it has his head refused to move as well. He saw claws, four of them. It came closer, shook itself and bolts rained down on the floor. Most of them were bent, some broken off.

"Raiden." The creature said in a very mechanical voice.

Raiden let go of the breath he had been holding. Wolf. He didn't bother to think about how Wolf had gotten here, but that didn't matter anyway. It was an ally. He couldn't speak at the moment, apparently the voice-box did not belong to the life supporting functions. He couldn't blame it. Wolf walked around the room, circled the UG and went over to Raiden to inspect the damage.

"I apologize." Wolf said. "I was late."

Raiden smirked, which must have looked distorted as only his upper lip moved.

"It appears you are unable to speak at the moment." Wolf concluded. "I have contacted Hal and Sunny. They will arrive in approximately four hours and thirty minutes." Wolf continued.

The AI sat down next to Raiden and lowered his head. Raiden wasn't sure what he was trying to accomplish with that, but he was grateful for the company. He wanted to warn Wolf too, this had obviously been a trap. One that had apparently worked rather effectively.

"The effects of the EMP should wear off in about an hour. I advise you not to panic."

Raiden's smirk got only wider. What was Wolf thinking? Sure, lying on the floor for over an hour and being unable to move was not the greatest place to be in, but it could have been a lot worse. He was upset for not learning anything about John's Location though.

"I have left the Hotel when I learned about your plans." Wolf told him after a while. "Replaying message of Sunny: ' _God he's such an idiot. I can't believe it, Wolf! Who's the child here, huh?! He can't just walk in like that and think everything works out fine! He should know better than that, Wolf!'_  End of message."

Sunny appeared to have been incredibly upset. He wasn't surprised. She cared about him dearly. Rose often said they acted like siblings. He could see it. The bantering, the remarks and the jokes. Sunny refused to leave his side when something was up and she happened to be there. She had always been like that.

"I have come here of my own accord. I have violated a rule Sunny has established." Wolf admitted. "The consequences of not following her rules were to help her clean when we returned home and to cook dinner with her."

Raiden was sure Wolf didn't mind those consequences. He tried to get up again, again without a result. It was annoying him, he was in pain too and he still had to find John!

"You appear to have sustained injuries." Wolf told him as if he had read his thoughts. "I cannot help you, however I can try to disable the security measures made for this facility."

Raiden tried to give him the 'Do what you want'-look, but wasn't sure if he really got it across. Wolf seemed to have caught up on it though as he skipped over Raiden to get to the other door. "I will monitor your Vital-signs. I have also relayed them to Maverick." With that Wolf opened the door and was gone from sight.

Raiden closed his eyes, hoped nothing else would try to attack him. His mind drifted off soon after that.

 _"Mom will get angry..."_ John had once told his father after they had played with paper planes in the backyard. Both had gotten their clothing quite dirty and John had been trying to clean the stains of his shirt.

 _"I'm the one doing laundry this week."_  Raiden had reminded his son.

_"Oh, then it's okay. You don't complain as much about messes as mom does!"_

_"Mom hates cleaning them up."_ Raiden had smirked.

_"I know. But she always leaves messes everywhere!"_

Raiden's eyes snapped open when he felt a weight on his right shoulder. Wolf had returned. "I have disabled the mechanism. This also opened the locked doors. Are you able to move?"

Raiden tried to move his arms, this time they at least twitched. "A..most-" The voice was distorted sounded unnatural. He growled in anger, hated to use this synthesized voice that sounded like a mock up of his own voice. Sadly he couldn't use his normal voice until all systems were back up it seemed. Not in this body at least. He should have been grateful to even have this option.

"The effect should wear off soon." Wolf informed him.

"Thanks..."

Wolf didn't say anything. A few more minutes passed, then Raiden was able to slowly move around again. He felt like he had been hit by a car or something like that. He felt dizzy and everything seemed heavier and slower than usual, almost as if the joints of the body weren't working properly.  Wolf pushed against his side when he was about to fall. This resulted in him hitting the wall, but it gave enough support to keep him up. The body felt like it wasn't his and it made him aware of what little was actually really **_him_**.  

The errors disappeared slowly, one by one. A few stayed. He hoped they would go away soon. "How'd you find me?" Raiden asked Wolf, glad the voice was almost back to normal now.

"Sunny has taught me techniques." Wolf replied.

"Hacking, huh?" Raiden smirked, felt the lower lip still protesting at the movement.

"Techniques." The AI repeated.

They had reached the room where the missiles had been in, Wolf didn't bother to comment on it. Raiden stumbled over the step between the door and the next room, but was able to catch his balance on his own this time.

"The following rooms are free of security measures." The AI informed him when they had left the room and headed down the dark corridor. Wolf glowed in the dark, Raiden noticed. The red light had something eerie about it, but he found it sort of reassuring.

At the end of the corridor the chill and the blue light greeted them. Wolf was about to head straight for the next door, but Raiden slowly turned towards the tubes. They still looked the same, the bodies still inside.

"Wolf..." He asked silently. "Can you tell if this is a hologram?"

Wolf walked up to him, about to analyze the data, but had to halt and nudge Raiden into the wall yet again. The cyborg was still unable to move properly or hold his balance. "We should not waste time with this." Wolf answered, but scanned the tubes anyway.

"They appear to be organic." He told Raiden. "Is that important?"

Raiden slowly shook his head. "No... It's impossible anyway." The cyborg used the wall to get to the exit, took one last glance at the tubes and slowly exited the room.

"May I ask what is impossible?"

Raiden hesitated and slowly made his way through the last corridor. "A human body..."

"As I have never possessed an organic body, I cannot relate to this." Wolf answered. "However, human relationships are build around body contact and intimacy. To rid a human being of this ability is... inhuman."

Raiden smiled at the AI. "You seem to know a lot about it." He walked across the room, used the table as support until he had reached the ladder.

"Sunny and I talked about it before. She has a very strong aversion to the people who did this to you."

"They hurt her too, Wolf." He told the Ai and climbed up the ladder. Wolf jumped up in two big leaps and joined Raiden at the exit of the building.

"Sunny has told me about it. She also told me that you are like a big brother to her." Wolf replied, exited the building and lead the way to the car. "It would be best for you to wait in the car."

"I know... have to get communication back running..." Raiden opened the car and sat down, but didn't close the door. Wolf sat down between the door and Raiden.

"You're not leaving my side either, huh?"

"I have my own objectives."

Raiden sighed, took the sheath off and put it on the passenger's seat. It was 1:34 in the morning, the night chilly and devoid of any clouds.

"I have explored the building, but I could not find any information about John's current location." Wolf told him when he had been staring at the trees for three long minutes and didn't say anything.

Raiden looked at him, exhaustion clear in his face. "I will find him."

"You need to rest. It was foolish of you to go in this building without back up."

"Are you scolding me?" Raiden smiled at the AI.

Wolf stayed silent for a moment. "Sunny would be upset."

Raiden sighed and leaned back into the seat. "Yeah she would be..." he muttered. "There are a few people who would be upset..."

Wolf rested his head on Raiden's lap, just like a real dog would do. The cyborg was surprised but placed his hand on top of the AI's head.

"Thanks, Wolf."

"I have caught a conversation a while back. You told Hal that you have no one who would 'save your ass', anymore."

"Listening in on private phone calls?"

"Hal had the speakers on. I did not try to eavesdrop."

Raiden sighed once more. "I'm not really alone... but... Sunny or Hal must have told you about Snake, right?"

"Many times."

"Without him I wouldn't be here."

Wolf made a sound that sounded like something between a sigh and a whimper. He really was acting more like a dog than an AI. Raiden was pretty sure that Wolf enjoyed that. Sunny treated him a lot better than anyone else.

 "...Will you help me find John?"

Wolf lifted his head. "I will."

They sat in silence for a while after that, only the soft rustling of the trees audible as the wind rushed through them.

Shortly after Four am a silver car pulled up to them. Rose was driving the car, Hal asleep on the passenger's seat. It seemed that they had taken turns in driving. Sunny was in the backseat, asleep as well. Rose was out of the car in an instant, didn't even bother to kill the engine when she ran around the silver car, almost crashed into wolf and then hit her head at the car's roof as she bowed down to her husband.

He flinched when she rubbed her forehead. "Rose..."

She shook her head and crouched down, mindful not to step on Wolf's tail. "Are you okay...? " she whispered when she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. "

He slowly hugged her, took in her scent and with it all the calming thoughts her scent held. "Mostly..." he told her. "It's... going to need repairs." He sighed. "I'm sorry..."

She shook her head. "Let me worry about the money." She ran a hand through his hair, kissed his cheek. "We go back to the hotel Sunny and Hal stay in."

He slowly got up to switch sides after Wolf had left his place next to him. The aftereffects of the EMP were still pretty obvious. The body was a lot stiffer than usual. He was slightly afraid that this wouldn't go away. It would cost a fortune to get that repaired. Rose watched his every move as he walked around the car to get to the passenger's seat, stopped when Sunny suddenly ripped open the door and hugged him tightly.

"Raiden!"

He was glad for the car behind him, otherwise Sunny would have actually managed to knock him over. "Hey Sunny."

The girl looked up at him, her relieved expression suddenly replaced by anger. "You big fat idiot!" she shouted. "Look what you did to the body..." she threw her arms in the air, then looked incredibly sad. "Are you alright?"

He sighed, knew he deserved the scolding, but that didn't make it less painful. "You tell me."

"Hal didn't let me take my stuff!"

"Of course not. The car wouldn't be able to move if you did." Raiden muttered and opened the door.

"That's not even-"

"Enough you two." Rose sighed. "You better go wake up Hal..."

Sunny nodded, gave Raiden a big hug and ran over to Hal.  Rose opened the trunk door to let wolf in and closed it after the AI had eagerly jumped in.  Sunny glared at Wolf for a moment, but dragged Hal out of the car and explained in wild gestures why Rose was now driving the other car.

"Jack, we need to talk." Rose said after she sat down in the driver's seat and shut the door.

"Not now Rose..."

Rose reached over and took his hand, squeezing it lightly. "Now." The said firmly.

He looked at her, but couldn't keep the eye contact up. "It's about you doing these things alone."

"I don't want you to get hurt." Raiden immediately answered.

Rose squeezes his hand tighter. "I don't want you hurt either!" she yelled, tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm worried about you! Constantly! Every day! I wonder how you're doing when you're not home, what you're doing, if everything is alright, if you feel lonely... If you're in pain... if you miss us..."

He gently took her hand but still didn't look at her.

"I was this close to just take Hal's car and follow you!" Rose then admitted. "John is out there somewhere and we need to find him. Together, Jack."

"But..."

Rose sighed. "I trust in your ability to protect me if it comes down to the worst. And you have to trust in _my_ ability to deal with all kinds of trouble."

He forced a smile on his lips. "Alright..." he whispered. He didn't like the idea much, but Rose wouldn't back down, he knew that.

"About the money, Rose..."

"I said it's okay. I still have some left we could use. You're more important than a vacation, John says that all the time." Rose smiled and started the engine. "Get some rest, Jack."

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments make me so happy :3 Thank you, guys!

Rose followed Hal's car for the past two hours almost automatically. She kept glancing over to her husband who was leaning against the door, eyes closed and almost completely still. He opened his eyes on occasion to look around, then closed them again and continued to do nothing for the next thirty minutes or so.

"Are you-"

"I'm alright." He didn't let her finish. She had asked the question at least three times now. "For now." He added this time.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked, took her eyes off the road for a second to glance at him. He wasn't looking at her, eyes still closed. Worried she turned back to the windshield, kept following Hal.

"Errors." Raiden muttered.

"Can you fix them?"

He scoffed. "This isn't your average glitch..."

Rose sighed, reached out to run a hand over his arm. "So, no cybernetic genius?" She teased.

He lifted an eyebrow. "Didn't come with the body."  With a sigh he ran a hand through his hair. "It'll cost a fortune..."

Rose took her hand away to change gears, but replaced it immediately after. "Stop worrying about it, Jack. Please."

"You know I can't."

"I know." She sighed. "How do you feel?"

He looked at her as if she had asked him how babies are made. "What do you think?"

"I want to hear it from you. Be as honest as you can be."

He sank a little deeper into the car-seat. "I..." He was fumbling for a answer, distracted long enough that Rose was about to say something when he eventually replied.

"Not great." It was almost a whisper, two words without much meaning to an outsider. Rose however knew what that meant. Her husband rarely was honest about how he felt, most of the time he didn't even bother to answer.

"Pain?"

"That too."

Rose chewed on her lip as she was trying to think up a solution and once more realized she couldn't do anything to help him. The technology was so advanced, most people hadn't even heard of it. Rose herself knew a few of technical words, devices, terms, just from hearing him talk to the phone to other people, but it made her feel helpless that she couldn't do anything.

"We're almost there." She muttered.

"John... he needs to be somewhere..." Raiden sighed.

Rose swallowed hard. "He will be somewhere. We will find him." She tried to sound confident but failed miserably.

Rose slowed the car down when Hal stopped at a red traffic light. They were back in civilized area, at half past seven in the morning. A lot of people were still asleep. She had seen a few cars whiz by, some pedestrians, but it was a very quiet morning. Dawn had just started to set in, it was a chilly and foggy August morning. A few raindrops landed on the windshield and Rose turned on the wipers. It was going to be a cold day, but she knew she wasn't going to see much of it anyway.

She watched as Hal pulled up to a supermarket parking lot and did the same. "Coffee?" She asked when she killed the engine.

Raiden looked at her with a smile but shook his head.

Rose nodded, removed her seatbelt and leaned over to him to kiss his cheek. "I'll be back in a minute."

She hurried out into the rain, met up with Hal and they both walked into the building. Raiden crossed his arms and tried to make this seat at least a tiny bit more comfortable than it was. He was hurting all over, and he was sure that not all of it came from actual damage.

"You appear to be uncomfortable." Wolf told him.

Raiden had almost forgotten that he was there. "It's nothing-" He jumped when the driver's door was suddenly ripped open and Sunny climbed into the car. She shut the door after she had taken off her shoes and kneeled on to the seat so she could face him, shivered and wiped her wet face in her sleeves, then pulled a laptop out from under her shirt and used what was still dry of her pants to wipe away the raindrops that had managed to get onto it anyway. Her hair was dripping wet, clothing drenched. He eyed her for a moment, then grabbed Rose's jacket and gave it to Sunny before he turned on the heater in the car.

"Something up?"

Sunny glared at him. "You're hurt. Of course something is up." The girl furrowed her brows, snuggled into the welcome warmth of the jacket and stared out of the window for a moment. "Can I talk to your technician?" She asked as she opened the laptop and sat it on her lap.

Raiden sighed and reached for the laptop. The girl eagerly gave it to him and watched him navigate to Skype. It had been set up as an emergency measure a while back. The cyborg had no idea for what, but now he was glad it was there. He logged into his account, then looked at sunny. "What do you need this for?"

Sunny blushed. "Well I have friends too, you know?"

He smiled and pressed the call button once he had found the person he was looking for and gave the laptop back to Sunny. "You look almost like you did back then. Just older!" She grinned while she waited for the stranger on the other end to pick up. "I only ever see you in combat bodies, you need to visit on your vacations too!"

"I'm not really in the area when I have free time... I'm sorry, Sunny."

"No,no, it's okay! I  understand that!" She quickly said, was about to say more but then the call had been picked up.

"Raiden! Is something-" Doktor frowned at the girl. "Who might you be, young lady? Where's Raiden?"

Raiden leaned over to be visible in the camera as well, grunting about the fact that it still took an immense effort to move.

"That's Sunny, Dok. I'm here..."

"Thank goodness. Communication with you got cut off so quickly. Wolf only sent your vital signs once. I feared the worst, there was no way to contact you."

Raiden pulled away again and leaned into the seat, but not before glaring at Wolf who just lowered his head to be out of sight.

 Sunny turned to the older man on the screen and straightened herself. "Raiden was hit by an EMP. The body sustained damage, but not just from that."

"EMP you say?"

"Yeah... came out of nowhere." Raiden growled.

"Errors?"

Raiden scoffed. "Most of them went away." He grabbed the laptop from Sunny and typed in the codes of the errors that still hadn't disappeared. Sunny watched him in awe. She didn't know why, but she found it amazing how fast he could type.

"Ah, I see, I see." Dok muttered after he had read the messages. He scratched his head and got up to walk around for a bit. "It appears that the neural network got minor damage, as well as the communication port. Of course I can't say what exactly, from here. The errors are quite basic, you know? They only say that something is wrong in some area, but not what exactly."

"I know." Raiden sighed,  turned around when the door behind him opened. Rose climbed into the backseat with a cup of coffee and a can of juice for Sunny.

"Stupid rain." She hissed silently, gave Sunny the juice and frowned at the laptop Raiden had. She leaned over, gently placed a hand on his shoulder to get a better look at the screen.

"As I was saying," Dok continued, "Those are very basic errors. I could not say what exactly is wrong unless I was seeing it for myself."

"Figured as much." Raiden sighed. "What do I do now? Wait for it to fix itself?"

The older man shook his head. "No, no. It would be best to fix this as soon as possible to avoid further damage and possible corruption of other data and systems."

"Can you tell me how to do it?" Sunny interrupted as she squeezed next to Rose to look at the screen again.

"Certainly, Sunny. However, while I trust your ability, some of the data is classified."

"Come on, Dok..." Raiden sighed in annoyance.

"You don't need to explain it in detail!" Sunny suddenly yelled, fear spreading over her features. "But Jack-" she stopped herself there, looked at Raiden with wide eyes for a moment and turned back to Dok. "Raiden... He..."

Rose placed a hand on her shoulder. "Sunny-" The girl flinched at the unexpected touch and tears welled up in her eyes.

"Sunny..." Raiden was trying to figure out how to calm her down, when she just wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his shirt and sobbed silently.

Rose retreated, watched them for a moment. She had the feeling that the sudden fear of the girl went deeper than it seemed. She was a strong girl, but she was still a child below all that. The woman left the car again and went over to Hal's car.

"... Is it because of what happened after I fought Vamp, back then?" Raiden silently muttered, unsure of how to deal with this. He barely remembered any of that, but Sunny was all over him the whole time. Snake had also never been far away. They had never said it, but they must have been worried.

The girl gripped his coat tighter and nodded.

"It won't happen again." He reassured her, carefully placed a hand on her back in a desperate attempt to calm the girl. "The body is different..." he muttered.

Sunny sniffed and pulled away but nodded slightly. He ruffled her hair like he did with John sometimes, wiped her tears away and forced a smile on his face.

"Sorry, Dok." Raiden muttered when he remembered that the call was still on.

"No, no." The man muttered. "I will  send the necessary data. Please destroy it after you're done, Sunny."

Sunny nodded quickly. "Of course!" She smiled, but her eyes still looked sad.

After the call had ended Sunny grabbed her laptop, squeezed Raiden once more and rushed back to Hal. Rose sat down in the driver's seat not much later.  The woman was drenched, shivered, but started the engine without a word and continued to follow Hal.

"Rose?" Raiden asked after a while.

"Hm?"

"Are _you_ alright?"

"Y-yeah..."

He wasn't convinced, but he didn't know how to ask. Rose probably knew how to deal with it. He slowly took off his coat, which was a small hassle as his body was still stiff and the car didn't provide much space. Once he had freed himself from the piece of clothing he put it over Rose's shoulders.

"I gave your jacket to Sunny."

Rose smiled. "I saw that." Her features got serious a moment later, nothing left of the smile. "Why was Sunny crying?"

Raiden tried to think of a way to weasel out of that question. He knew rose would bug him about it until he answered it though.

"She remembered something... I don't want to talk about it."

"I'll ask you again, later." Rose sighed, pulled into the parking lot to the Hotel and looked at her husband for a long moment. "The man you talked to..."

"Doktor?"

"Is he the one who..." Rose tried to find a good way to word it. She often felt strange to speak of the body as his, he rarely did it himself.

"He improved this body. This one is mine." Raiden explained. "The other one belongs to maverick." He scoffed. "We'd never make enough money to buy that one."

Rose nodded, opened her door and was greeted by a beeping noise reminding her that she forgot to turn the headlights off. She flicked the switch, pulled the keys out and shut the door. On her way around the car she let Wolf out who dashed under the canopy that connected the two buildings of the hotel, to get out of the rain. She hadn't interacted much with the AI, only knew that Raiden had been fond of it and that Sunny took it in.

Raiden was already out of the car, grabbed the sheath of the HF-Blade and stiffly made his way over to where Wolf was waiting with Sunny and Hal. Sunny seemed to have recovered, but the overall mood was really tense and dark. Rose handed the coat back to her husband when they walked into the entrance hall. Raiden's eyes were darting around and he automatically avoided getting too close to anyone who had decided to be up this early.

He stood next to a stone column when Rose walked up to the counter to get a room, overheard the conversation Rose had with the woman.

"Is that man a cyborg?"

Raiden closed his eyes, turned away and tried to block it out.

"Is that a problem?" Rose asked coldly.

"Well, It could be. Cyborgs have quite the bad reputation. Is that a weapon on his back? Military Cyborgs aren't allow-..."

Raiden turned to peek at them when the receptionist trailed off. Rose had both her hands stemmed onto the counter and leaned in dangerously close to the woman. "He can hear you, you know?"

"W-Well... But they're still-" the other woman swallowed and tried to back away but Rose grabbed her collar. "Human." Rose growled angrily. "I'd like the keys to the room I just rented, now."

"O-Of course."

Rose snatched the keys, gave the woman a glare and made sure she wouldn't pull off anything like this again with her next statement. "I advise you to keep your personal business out of your job. Otherwise you might not have it for very long." She stomped over to Raiden, her shoes making a wet noise. He realized that she was wearing a pair of shoes that looked like they belonged to Hal.

Raiden trudged after her, tried to ignore the stares and the whispers of the few people he passed. He pulled the collar of the coat up and closed it, then stepped onto the elevator Rose had held open.

"I can't believe these people!" she complained as she punched in the floor number. Once the door closed she sighed deeply and looked up to her husband. "I'm sorry... I shouldn't have dragged you out here..."

He shook his head silently, a few raindrops fell out of his hair and landed on the ground. "It was necessary..." His voice was muffled through the fabric. He made no move to change that.

When they had reached the 7th floor Rose looked around in slight confusion. Raiden walked past her and waved her along after he had figured out how the rooms were numbered. The hotel looked average, not too expensive and not shabby either. He didn't care about that, it was the money he was worried about.

Rose opened the door to their room, took off her wet clothing  where she stood and tossed it to the ground. She didn't bother to put on anything when she dug out her cell-phone from her pants to check her messages.

Raiden automatically went to pick up the discarded clothing, grunting once more at the protesting body. Once he had placed Roses clothing over the heater, he took off his coat, put it on a hanger and went to the next best mirror to inspect the actual damage. He was unbuttoning the shirt when Rose shouted from the bathroom. "Sunny just said they found a hint that might lead to John's location!"

Raiden paused. "Where?"

"Europe..." Rose sounded confused.

"What?" Raiden asked in disbelief. "That's far..." He shook his head to himself, theories swarming around his mind already. "What's the point of taking him there... what do they want?!"

Rose peeked out from the bathroom. "I don't get it either...  If they wanted something... they should have contacted us... right?"

Raiden sighed. "It depends on _what_ they want..."

"What could they want? What do we have that is of interest?"

"This." Raiden patted his chest to make his point clear.

"You mean they want the technology?"

"I don't know, but this is the only thing I can think of that could have any value to someone else."

Rose nodded slowly.  

"Unless..." He turned away from her and shook his head violently.

"Unless what?"

"What if whoever did this wanted to get back at us, at me..."

She gently placed a hand on his shoulder. "Don't think about it too much..."

He nodded slowly. "Is there an exact location?"

The woman sighed, tied the bathrobe she had put on and walked up to her husband. "Not yet."

"This is absurd." He replied and continued to unbutton his shirt.

He saw Rose grimace when he had taken off the shirt and neatly folded it to place it on the drawer under the mirror.  He turned a bit to get a view on his back, then sighed. The skin looked as bad as he had imagined. He hadn't imagined the exoskeleton to be this scratched though. He had been lucky, he realized now.

Rose looked closer, almost as if curious.

"Don't touch it." He warned her.

Rose shook her head. "That would be like touching someone's bones." She shivered at that thought and looked back at her phone while she went to the big window next to the couch. Raiden tried to establish a decent connection to Maverick, but he still couldn't get through.

A knock on the door made both of them look up. "Yes?" Rose asked, slightly confused.

The wooden door opened and Sunny walked into the room, her laptop under her arm and all sorts of different cords with her. "I'm sorry for the wait, Hal insisted that I took a hot shower."

 Raiden turned to Rose at that. "You should too." He muttered.

Rose nodded and went back to the bathroom.

Sunny looked around to find a nice spot to set to work, then placed her laptop and the cords on the bed and gripped an armchair, struggled to pull it closer to the bed.

"Let me do that." Raiden sighed.

"No. You're hurt." Sunny protested.

"I'm not senile..." He grabbed the chair and carried it to where Sunny pointed at.

"But stubborn! Now go lie down."

He looked at her for a moment. "Any reason for that?"

"Yes." Sunny said firmly and climbed into the armchair. "You're heavy and if you fall you might crush me." There was the hint of a smirk on her face when she grabbed the cords and sorted them through. When Raiden sat down on the bed she sighed and held the cords out to him.

"Ports." Was all she said. She seemed a bit upset.

Raiden took the cords and connected them to the necessary ports, then laid down on his stomach. "What is this about John?" He asked when Sunny opened up windows and typed into the keyboard as if her life depended on it.

Sunny stopped typing for a moment. "It's just an assumption. I analyzed all data of recently kidnapped children in New Zealand and Europe popped up with the highest probability, as a lot of children had been found there."

"Why would someone take on such an effort..."

Sunny shrugged. "I'm no kidnapper. I don't know."

Raiden buried his face into the sheets and closed his eyes. "He must be scared... if he's still alive that is..."

Sunny lifted an eyebrow when the diagnostic she ran suddenly popped up a warning. "Can you think about flowers or sheep or something for a while?"

"Why?"

"You're messing up the reading."

He sighed deeply but tried to shove the thoughts about John away. His mind was drifting off, Sunny's monotone typing and the faint sound of the shower in the bathroom were calming and made him forget about the situation.

Sunny had gotten rid of two errors after a few minutes and giggled when she was tackling the third. "You're falling asleep."

"And you ate too many cookies yesterday." He mumbled silently.

"Wolf told you." She sighed, then straightened in the chair and grumbled silently. She didn't know much about the technology or the systems that were used here. Most of them appeared to be custom made. The particular error she was working on at that moment seemed to relate to a custom part she had no knowledge about.

Remembering the E-Mail she had gotten from Doktor she opened it and quickly found what part had caused the error. The left shoulder joint was apparently not working as it was supposed to.

Doktor had written something next to it. _'Warning: Do **not** disconnect the left arm.'_

Sunny nodded slowly and skipped that error. She began to work on the next, silently sat to work when Rose left the bathroom in a bathrobe, a towel neatly tied around her head to keep her hair from dripping everywhere. She smiled at Sunny.

"Do you want something to eat?" She asked the girl silently.

"I'm good." Sunny replied. "Thanks."

Rose smiled and sat on the other side of the bed, gently running a hand through Raiden's hair. "You, Jack?"

"No." he grumbled into the sheets.

Rose looked at Sunny then. "Can I help you with anything?"

Sunny shook her head. "Not really. Some errors are caused by hardware damage, so they won't go away until it's replaced or repaired."

Suddenly a beeping noise went off at Sunny's laptop and Rose back away in surprise while Raiden sat up and almost yanked the cords out of the laptop.  He grimaced, checked if everything was still in place and slumped back down. "Don't tell me that's me..."

"It's not." Sunny reassured him. "I set an alarm in case my analyzing program found more information."

Sunny opened up the program and frowned.

"Anything new?" Raiden asked.

"No. It just updated the long list of possible locations." Sunny sighed. "I'm sorry I can't help more."

Raiden shook his head. "You're helping a lot, Sunny."

"He's right." Rose agreed.

Sunny smiled, then continued to type on her laptop. "Communication should be possible now." She muttered after a few more minutes.

Raiden nodded and gave Maverick a call.

"Raiden!" Boris almost shouted. "Are you alright?"

"...Yeah." He didn't want to go into more details. "Did you find out anything?"

"No." Kevin muttered. "Buddy, this stinks. There's nothing on anyone. Nothing updated, nothing new either. Just a few more missing children in countries all over the world. The usual."

Raiden nodded. "Thanks anyway. Keep me posted."

"Of course."

Raiden turned to sunny when the girl shut her laptop and removed the cords. "All done." She smiled sadly. "At least what I could fix... I don't have the material or the knowledge to fix the physical damage."

Raiden shook his head and sat up, finally able to move properly again, except for his left shoulder, but it wasn't too much of a restriction. "Thanks Sunny."

"Anytime." The girl yawned and stood. "I'll get some sleep now. You should too."

The girl left the room, shut the door silently.

"What do we do now...? Europe is big..."

Rose sighed. "We can't just go there and hope we find him. If he really was kidnapped, for whatever reason, he could be anywhere..." The woman leaned against the headboard of the bed and stared at her husband for a long time.

"I just... He must be scared..."

Rose nodded and inched closer to him. "Why was Sunny crying?" Rose then asked out of nowhere, catching Raiden off guard.

He had forgotten about the question from earlier already. "She remembered something." Raiden repeated.

"What did she remember?"

"Rose..."

"I want to know."

He glared at her. "You know I almost died after that fight with Vamp. That's why she cried." He growled. "This reminded her of it..."

"Oh..." Rose lifted her eyebrows.

Raiden took in a deep breath. "I'm sick and tired of not knowing where John is."

"Going out and randomly looking for him is like finding a needle in a haystack."

"But at least We'd do something!"

"You did enough, getting yourself caught like that!"

He opened his mouth to argue, but then shut it and sighed.

"We will find him..." Rose muttered.

Raiden nodded, glared at the door. He really wanted to go out and just search for John anyway.

 


	7. Bits and Pieces

Fear gripped him with its icy claws as darkness surrounded him. Cold Icy darkness all around him. There were no walls, no floor. He was falling and nothing was there to stop it.

He tried grab onto whatever he could find in the darkness, didn't know why his heart was hammering against his chest like that. He was gasping for air, flailing helplessly wherever he was. He couldn't see, couldn't hear anything. A faint voice was calling out to him, it sounded male, old.

 _"Jack!"_ he heard the voice yell. The voice was familiar. It belonged to a man he had killed. Was Solidus out for revenge now? The voice seemed to come from everywhere as it was repeated at least a dozen times, came back to him, distorted, loud, blaring. He tried to clutch his hears to block the voice out, found that he couldn't move as the screeching sound assaulted him from everywhere. He felt as if he was being torn apart, shredded to pieces while being fully conscious. He must have started to yell at some point.

"Jack!"

Something gripped his shoulders, he tried to struggle out of it, push the attacker away. Anything to get free, get away from this terrifying darkness. The touch disappeared for a moment, but was back again not much later. Something crashed in the distance, glass maybe, maybe a gunshot, he couldn't tell. His ears were ringing, his heartbeat hammering in his head.

"Raiden!"

Everything stopped.

The darkness was chased away when his eyes snapped open. Daylight was still seeping through the half drawn curtains. The sun was about to set it seemed, the room colored in the washed out gray color after a long and rainy day.

He was on his back, gasping for air. Rose was over him, pale. A scratch on her cheek. She was trembling as much as he was, gently brushed his hair out of his face.

"Just a nightmare." She whispered, rested her hand next to his head while she held his hand with the other.

He hadn't realized he was gripping her hand until he tried to release it. It was difficult for a moment.

"R-Rose...?" he whispered, throat drier than usual, tongue heavier than usual. He stared at her with wide blue eyes.

The woman nodded. "You fell asleep." She told him.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The scratch on her face was bleeding slightly. He couldn't shake the feeling that it was his fault. When he sat up the glass vase the hotel staff had left fake flowers in was lying on the ground, shattered. The lamp on the nightstand had fallen to the side, the armchair Sunny had used had been knocked down.

He ran a hand over his face in confusion and fear. "Rose... Did... did I...?"

The woman tried to smile at him, but she couldn't bring herself to it. "I couldn't watch you like this... It's my own fault for interfering."

He swallowed hard. "I... I didn't mean to..."

"I know. It's not your fault." She reassured him.

 It hadn't been the first time. This had happened a bunch of times, though Rose usually had been fast enough to prevent the worst. He had been lying there so peacefully, she thought she could go to a grocery store to get something to eat. There had been to way to get her to buy any of the expensive food they served here. When she had returned to the room he was tossing and turning, screaming names, calling for help. She had slammed the door shut, dropped the bag and rushed over to him.

"It's alright now."

He nodded slightly, still out of it. The nightmares didn't happen as often as they used to, but that didn't make them friendlier. Sometimes he thought they'd gotten worse. He ran a hand through his hair now, fingers trembling slightly, really wanted to take a cold shower now but then remembered that this wasn't the best idea at the moment. The exoskeleton was waterproof, but he couldn't trust that anymore after he saw the scratches.

"Jack?" Rose asked, ripping him out of his thoughts. "Do you need anything?"

He shook his head. One day in his life were not all hell broke loose. He'd be happy with that, just one sickening boring day without nightmares, without people staring at him, without trouble. Was that too much to ask for?

"What time is it...?"

"About five pm. You slept for quite a while."

He nodded, still tired. There was nothing that could get him back to bed now, though.  He reached out to her, inspected the scratch on her cheek. It was just a small wound, it would heal without any scar, but he still felt guilty.

"I'm sorry..."

Rose shook her head. "I'm sorry for not being here sooner... I went out to get food."

"I didn't mean to fall asleep." He apologized.

"You were tired. It's alright, Jack."

He looked away, slowly moved the blanket away she had moved over him. Just a friendly gesture. He wouldn't really get cold that quickly. But it made him feel like she cared about him. That it didn't matter to her that his body was a machine.

"Did Sunny find out more?"

"Not really... She went to the roof garden, said it had glass  roofs and the sound of the rain helps her focus." Rose replied when she got up and walked over to the bag she had dropped.

She hadn't bought much, just enough for the evening and breakfast. And maybe something for Jack if he decided he wanted to eat something. Not that he needed. Sometimes he just did it anyway. Maybe she was more happy than he was when she learned that he was able to eat like a normal person again. It were the little things he treasured, things that had been stripped of him. She looked at him when she went to the small kitchen area the hotel-room provided.

He was staring off into space, likely still focused on the nightmare he had.

"Want to talk about it?" Rose asked from the kitchen, dug out a slice of the bread she had bought and put it on the place after she had cut up some vegetables to place them on it.

"...Not really." He sighed and moved his legs out of the bed. "Solidus." He spat the name out as if it was toxic. Rose knew what it meant, she didn't bother to pry more. He'd close up completely if she did. It wasn't as if she didn't know the whole story.

"I'll talk to Sunny..." He was hesitating when he stood. The thought of running into people now didn't make it any better.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Rose asked when she packed what she had used into the mini fridge.

"It's alright." He shook his head, went to the drawer to put his shirt back on. He glared his the reflection in the mirror as he buttoned the shirt, messed around with his hair to look presentable. He looked terrible, he noticed.

It took him a while until he was more or less satisfied with the result, then went to get his coat, surprised it wasn't on the hanger he had left it on.

"I took your coat, Sunny still has my Jacket..." Rose muttered. "I put it in the bathroom, it's drenched."

He briefly considered taking the coat anyway, then decided against it. He couldn't risk getting his systems wet. With a deep sigh he walked up to the door. "I'll be back in a bit..."

The corridor was empty when he left the room. The generic gray-blue carpet was spread all over the ground, the occasional plant next to a big window. Rose had been right. It was still raining like no tomorrow. That also meant more people inside.

He took a deep breath and pressed the button for the elevator, looked around as he waited for it to arrive. The distinct 'ding' and the doors opening, made him turn back to it. Two men were inside, a woman too. He turned his head away when he stepped into it and pushed the button for the last floor. It likely led to the garden Rose had mentioned.

The people were silent, but he could feel their stares in him. The men eyed him wearily, the woman with something between disgust and pity. He couldn't tell what it was. Did he have a sign on his back said, 'I want to be stared at because I don't know that my face looks unnatural'?

In the ninth floor he couldn't take it anymore and got off the elevator. Why hadn't he taken the stairs in the first place?

Growling he stomped through the corridor to find the stairwell. He located it after a few minutes behind of a glass door that was clearly marked as an emergency exit and should only be used as such. The device mounted to it made it clear that this thing would throw an alarm at him should he try to open it.

Was everyone out to make this day even worse?

He was about to return to Rose by then. He tried to remember the room number, about to consider just reviewing the video-log, when someone ran into him. It was a small boy, four maybe five years old. The boy bounced back and landed on his rear, stared up at the tall man in front of him, not knowing if he should continue to stare or cry.

Raiden crouched down, it was a habit. How often had he plucked John from the floor when the boy had fallen down after imitating all the ninjas he had seen in the movies. The boy didn't back away and Raiden helped him back to his feet.

"You okay?" he said, still crouching down.

The boy nodded quickly and Raiden saw someone behind him when he stood again. Likely the mother of the boy. He mentally prepared himself for scolding, yelling, flying purses and whatever else the woman could find, but none of that came. The dark haired woman smiled at him. A genuine but slightly uncertain smile.

"I'm sorry, he just ran off..."

"It's okay." He said quickly, hoped she would let him pass before she realized what the lines on his face implied.

"Apologize to the man, Ryan." The woman said to her son in a gentle but firm tone.

The boy looked shy now but mumbled something that could have meant ' _sorry_ '.

"I... didn't want to cause trouble." Raiden quickly said, backed away unconsciously. He had dealt with this so often, the moment they realized what he was, the friendly facade would drop and they'd show their true nature.

The woman shook her head. "It's all good. Ryan does this all the time. If anything, I should be sorry for him causing trouble."

Didn't she see it? That would be a first. No, her eyes were definitely focusing on it. And he saw her frown, and he expected her to get angry, to pull her child away and hurry into another direction, but she didn't. She looked up, into his eyes.

"Thanks for dealing with him." Her smile was real now.

He nodded quickly, unsure what to say when she picked her boy up and her long skirt slipped up a bit. Her legs weren't human.

And now he stared at her.

She grinned when she noticed his gaze. He quickly looked away. He hated it when they stared at him, why did he do it now?!

"Don't worry, I get stared at a lot." She shrugged.  "Cheer up, Hm? I'm not going to throw things at you."

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Oh I heard all kinds of insults already, I can only imagine what people say and do to full-body cyborgs."

He nodded, baffled. She was so casual about it. And she was just a mere civilian. Maybe that was why?

"I really need to go now, Ryan needs to get ready for bed. I'm Eva."

"Raiden." He muttered automatically. A picture of Big Mama flashed up in his mind at that name. Another person he would never see again. It was a shame.

The woman nodded, then was around the corner. She moved pretty fast, but it didn't surprise him much now.

He stood in the empty corridor for a while longer, still sort of shocked and surprised. Maybe he was also a little glad. He felt a tiny bit better now when he went back to the elevator. No one was inside this time and he considered himself sort of lucky.

On the top floor he was greeted with a glass door in a relatively short corridor. Behind the door he could see wooden floor, a few chairs and couches and plants. Sunny was sitting on a couch, laptop on her lap. She typed something, paused and typed again. He opened the door and stepped out. It was chilly up here, but empty. Sunny was the only person there.

The girl was totally absorbed in what she was doing, listened to music with giant head phones that made her look even smaller than she was. She moved her feet with the music and hummed along at some passages.

She hadn't noticed him at all. She would likely be surprised when he just touched her so he went in front of her and crouched down. She was focused on the screen, not seeing him until he waved a hand in front of her face.

Sunny squeaked in surprise and jumped to her feet. Raiden grabbed the laptop as it fell off her lap. The headphones got ripped out of the port and Sunny's music was now playing through the speakers.

"Raiden! Don't scare me like that!" she shouted.

"You didn't notice me." He sighed.

The girl slumped back down on the couch, took her laptop back and plugged the headphones in. She then took them off and placed the laptop next to her.

"Geez. Really..." She pouted.

He sat next to her, sighed. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "I should have expected you to show up sooner or later. I have narrowed down the location a bit more, but it's still in Europe or close to it..."

"Where?"

"Czech, Germany, Poland... or," she made a long pause and sighed deeply. "Russia."

Raiden leaned against the backrest in defeat, grimaced at his back protesting. He had forgotten about the damage.

"Almost all of those seem likely." He scoffed.

Sunny shrugged. "I don't know. But maybe it gets narrowed down a bit more... it's still analyzing after all."

He nodded.  "Can I help with anything?"

"You can take Wolf for a walk."

"Very Funny."

Sunny sighed. "Raiden...?"

"Hm?"

"Was my mother really worried about me?"

"Until the very last moment." He told her silently. "Olga was thinking about you all the time, Sunny."

Sunny nodded, placed her head on his lap and curled up. "I didn't bring her photo with me... It feels lonely. And I lost my hairclip... and..." Her voice began to tremble. "Everyone I really like disappears..."

"It's just the messed up world we live in..." He muttered silently.

"You never knew your real parents either, right?"

The question caught him off guard and he flinched. "I don't remember them."

Sunny sighed and fumbled with a stray thread on his pants. "...Wouldn't that make Snake your uncle?"

"I guess..." he mumbled hesitantly. It hurt to talk about him like this. Mentioning him was fine, but not when it went deeper than that. He was pretty sure he still hadn't fully grasped the fact that Snake wasn't there anymore.

"I miss him sometimes..." The girl sat up again to lean against his shoulder. "Do you miss him too?"

Raiden pressed his eyes shut and bit his lip when he nodded slightly. He couldn't give a verbal reply.

Sunny huffed, grabbed her laptop and checked her program again. It hadn't changed anything. It seemed so slow to wait for results, wait for anything. She was good friends with John, even though they barely saw each other. They would communicate through chats and sometimes video-calls. John was, even though he was younger, quite smart and she could ramble to him about all sorts of problems that couldn't be solved by scientists or computers. And when his parents fought, he would call her.

 _"They're fighting again."_ John had told her in a call a few months back.

_"They'll stop. You know that."_

_"But they're loud. I think mom just threw a vase at him..."_

_"He'll live. Did he start it?"_

_"I don't know. I don't care either... can't they fight when I'm at school?!"_

When Hal was heartbroken about another failed relationship, she would call him. George was there too, he was a friend, but she couldn't talk to him like she did with John. John had something different about him. Maybe it was the way he spoke to her without any interest in her skills or her looks. He was just rambling the day away sometimes, talking to her so casually. She liked how he spoke of Raiden. He admired him, and he often told her about his plans to become a ninja as well.

_"I want to be a ninja too when I grow up."_

_"But no Cyborg-Ninja?"_

_"No. That'll be too expensive and... have you ever seen how they look at dad? These people are disgusting!"_

She agreed on that part. To her he didn't look much different. There was the scar on his face, she assumed it was the reason everyone stared at him for.

"Lost in thoughts?" Raiden asked when they had sat in silence for a long time.

She smiled. " I thought about John..."

"Hrmm." He grunted. "Me too..."

Sunny opened up a new window on her laptop and began to type into it. Raiden tried to keep track of it but soon gave up on it. She was opening windows and closing them at a pace he could barely follow. The girl didn't seem to say anything more and he went back to dwell on his thoughts. John was such a good kid. Why hadn't he appreciated the boy more...

"I got something!" Sunny suddenly said and sat up straight. "There's a report of a man leaving the military base a few hours before you arrived there. He got a speeding ticket."

"Name?"

"Some...wait." Sunny frowned and leaning in closer. "Sears?"

Raiden's eyes widened in disbelief. "That's impossible!" he looked at her screen, read what she read. The name was definitely there. Sunny looked at him with wide eyes for a long moment. Watched as he stood and made a call to someone.

"Buddy, have you any idea how late it is?" Kevin mumbled with  a yawn. He had ripped him out of bed.

"I need everything you can find on the name 'Sears'. Even if you dig up me, everything."

"Okay... can I ask why?"

"Sunny dug up someone who was at the base. He apparently had that name. I don't think that's a coincidence but I can't think of anyone with that name who would still be alive."

"Alright." Kevin said, yawned and set to work. "I'll call you when I find something."

"Thanks."

Raiden slumped back onto the couch, shaking his head. "What the hell is going on here...?"

Sunny wasn't sure what to say so she stayed quiet, watched the rain cascading down the glass-roof and glared at the fading daylight.  "I'm hungry... I go back to Hal. Will you be okay?" The girl shut her laptop and put the headphones around her neck when she stood.

"Yeah."

She nodded and left him alone to dwell on his thoughts and all the theories, and all the other things. Solidus was dead. Liquid was dead, Snake was dead. Big Mama and Big Boss too. There was no one left. He didn't even know if they had all used the same last name.

When he made his way back to their room, still not remembering the room number. He had the strange feeling that someone followed him. There was no one around, the corridors were too open to hide. There was no way for anyone to sneak up on him

 _"That's a good boy."_  A voice taunted in his mind. He almost missed _Jack_ talking to him. This voice now was cold, full of fake affection. Maybe Solidus had liked him. As a tool. Had he ever been something else? He had only slowly begun to understand what a family was after he had met Rose. And it had taken him half a decade to finally accept it.

 _"You're spacing out, Kid."_  A different voice. He knew that one too. _"Ignore him, he's an idiot."_

Was he going completely mad now? Why was he hearing voices of long dead people? He stumbled into the wall when a sudden wave of dizziness swarmed over him. Was he running low on nutrition? He should have had enough time left.

_"Focus! Kid!"_

He couldn't. His vision was blurred and distorted. He could barely move. What the hell was going on?!Errors came blaring at him again. He felt his knees buckle.

He didn't have time to think about it when his eyes opened again. He was still in the corridor, the gray carpet so much closer. It smelled of dust and fiber. What had happened? Slowly he sat up, leaned against the wall. He was still dizzy, confusion still swarming around his mind. Maybe there was also fear. Not knowing what was going on with the body was scary. One malfunction could kill him, and it was so obvious to him now. He swallowed, stiffly got back to his feet and glared at the errors swarming his field of vision.

He couldn't trust his eyes, nausea spreading through him as he slowly walked over to the elevator. The communication port was malfunctioning again, movement seemed to be restricted too, and that terrible headache that made it impossible to grasp one useful thought.

_"Pliskin. Iroquois Pliskin."_

Raiden didn't bother to frown at the voice anymore. So Snake was talking to him now. Why did it surprise him. He was used to hold conversations with a part of his conscience. Why not hold them with a dead person?

_"Didn't they brief you on any of this?"_

He dragged himself into the elevator, leaned against the wall when he tried to find the button for the seventh floor. The numbers looked distorted, surreal. It took him a long moment to get his eyes to focus and find the right button.

He tried to contact Doktor, before remembering that the communication was messed up again. It seemed to take forever until the doors opened up again. He turned to the left, dragged his feet over the carpet as he tried to find the room Rose was in. One of these numbers seemed familiar  and he just grabbed the door handle and yanked the door open.

He saw Rose looking at him for a split second, then darkness assaulted him.

Rose jumped over the couch she had been sitting on, stormed up to him out of a reflex when she saw his legs giving out. She had made the mistake of trying to catch him like a normal person once. It had earned her a concussion as he had dragged her down with his weight. Sometimes he just did faint out of nowhere. She couldn't say she was used to it, but she knew it happened from time to time. She had also learned that she needed to go on differently about catching him. And that was to ram her own weight into him until he was half slumped over her shoulder.

Her knees protested at the weight and she grunted as she walked backwards and dragged him away from the door. Sweat was building up on her forehead when she gripped his shirt and turned so that she could push him onto the bed. His legs were hanging over the frame, his arms spread. She inspected his face, checked his breathing. It had taken her a while to figure out how to check for life signs on him.

"Jack?" she said silently when his hands twitched.

"...Sunny." he mumbled and slipped back into the darkness.

Rose swallowed, took her cell phone and gave Sunny a call. She was very close to panicking now. This was different from the few times he had just exhausted himself too much from putting together the whole kitchen in one night or when he had stayed awake with John all night because the boy had been sick and she was forced to work over time. He would smirk at her, call himself stupid and then just fall asleep. This time it was completely different.

"Rose?" Sunny asked in confusion when she picked up.

"Jack-..." Rose needed to force herself to keep calm. "He passed out!"

It didn't take a full minute for Sunny to barge into the room. She had her laptop with her, cords as well, the laptop set to call Raiden's technician. He would forgive her for hacking into his account, she hoped.

The girl placed her  tools on the bed, opened up her laptop, still waiting for the man on the other half of the globe to accept the call. While she waited she gave Rose a worried glance. The two females needed quite a bit of strength to turn Raiden onto his side. Rose held the hair away and the shirt down while Sunny located the ports and inserted the cords. A spark of electricity sizzled around one of the cords for a split second.

Sunny took her hands away in surprise. Her laptop wasn't affected by it, but she made a mental note to mention this to Doktor once the man decided to pick up. Sunny then realized that it was almost midnight where he lived.

She opened up the diagnostic from earlier, ran a scan, was shocked by all the new errors that had popped up. This was easily twice as much as last time. And this time it affected more vital spots. Nerves, respiration and a system she didn't know what it was doing.

The horror must have been displayed on her face when Rose placed a hand on her shoulder.

The girl ignored it and decided to tackle the issues herself. She was a genius, what a joke if she couldn't save one of the most important people in her life! She tried to call Doktor again, let it run in the background when she read through the lines of foreign code that made absolutely no sense to her. For now Raiden was still mostly okay, but it was gradually getting worse and she didn't need that data to see that. His breathing had become shallow and was cut off altogether at times. Rose had then moved and gripped his hands, squeezing them tightly.

Sunny was getting desperate now, tears stung in her eyes as she scanned through the code. Why was this happening now? Was it because she couldn't fix that one error? What did it affect anyway? Why was it so important not to disconnect the left arm?

A faint sob came over her lips when her trembling fingers flew over the keys. She was too riled up to concentrate efficiently, too scared. A soft knock at the door made Rose look up. Hal was standing there, his own laptop in his hand. He didn't ask questions when he sat down next to Sunny, his laptop close to hers when he plucked two cords form hers and put them in his laptop. They seemed to communicate without words and Rose couldn't be bothered to ask anything now. She didn't know what they were doing, but seeing her husband like this, told her everything she needed to know. If they didn't work fast enough, he would die. How painfully obvious that was now.

"Line 24560063 onwards." Sunny said, eyes glued to her screen. "It's a different coding style."

"A virus?" Hal asked.

"Focus on the vital systems, those are the most important ones. I tackle this." Sunny said calmly. She was glad for the new hardware she had installed into her laptop just a week earlier. Otherwise this program would have fried it with its complexity.

Rose wiped her sweaty palms in her jeans and resumed to hold Raiden's hands.  There wasn't much she could do. With a normal person she would have called an ambulance and that would have been it. But who helped cyborgs when they were in immediate need of help?

Rose pressed his hands to her forehead, whispered to whatever god was out there to not take him from her. His breathing was so shallow now, his face scrunched up in pain. Sunny had left to get a third laptop then, set it on a chair and started it up. She proceeded to call Doktor on that one, as she needed all other resources on her main laptop.

Rose was feeling sick to the bone, her lips dry, heart hammering against her chest. She moved the blond hair out of her husband's face, not surprised that her hands trembled as much as they did.

The sudden voice coming from the third laptop, made Rose flinch violently.

"Raiden?" The man asked in surprise, maybe confusion.

"Something is affecting his vital-systems." Sunny said without looking away from her screen or halting her hands over the keyboard. "Whatever it is, it wants to kill him."

"Hold on." Doktor muttered.

"It appears to be a virus." Hal hissed.

"Worm." Sunny said. "It's a worm." She continued to type, cursed under her breath and kept going.

Doktor was silent for a while. Rose buried her face in the sheets. "Doesn't he have any sort of anti-virus software?!" Sunny shouted now.

"He does." Doktor replied calmly.

"Well, I can't find it!" the girl shouted back, panicking now.

"Sunny," Hal said calmly, trying to calm her down. "It appears that this worm has gotten access to it."

The girl's face was red in anger, tears still stinging in her eyes when she pushed Hal away from his laptop and continued to work on what he had worked on.

Hal, now forced to work on the code Sunny had dug up, glanced at Rose for a short moment. The woman was biting down on her trembling lip, breath going fast and her hands trembled so badly.

"I will send you a backup of the data that was made before he left." Doktor then said.

Rose glanced at the screen, watched the man has he packed things into a suitcase that was lined with black foam. The man looked nervous and genuinely worried when he sat back down and typed into his keyboard.

"I can be there in half a day..." Doktor muttered after he had sent the E-mail, heavily encrypted, but he was sure that it wasn't a problem for Sunny.

 "That's too long!" Sunny hissed, typing away on the keyboard as line of code altered in front of her eyes without her doing anything, without her being able to stop it.

"Sunny," Hal muttered. "You need to calm down."

The girl glared at him, fury obvious in her face. "He's dying!"

"Sunny," Doctor now said. "There are measurements that keep his brain alive should all other systems fail. It won't last forever, but it will give you a time window of about two hours."

"That's not enough time!"

"It is better than nothing, is it not?"

Now Hal glared at the man. "This is just business to you, isn't it? He's our friend!"

Doktor shook his head. "There is nothing I can do from here. I have sent the data, please use it to restore the corrupted code. I will be there."

The screen turned black and the silence was only disturbed by Sunny and Hal typing frantically on their Keyboards. Rose wished she would know anything about this.

She flinched when the hands she held suddenly squeezed hers. Maybe it had been a reflex, his face hadn't changed, he didn't look at her, but he held her hands tightly, almost too tightly. She kissed the back of his hand, tried to reassure him even though she wasn't sure if he was even conscious enough to realize it.

Sunny let out a long breath. "I got it! ... the worm is still there, but I managed to restore the data and lure the worm into a trap. It should avoid the vital systems for a while. I also set up an alarm that will go off if it tries again." Her voice was trembling, her eyes wide and her face pale, but she looked calmer now. "I'm making a backup of my program, it seems that the worm is able to learn..."

"Who'd go through such measures..." Hal whispered now. He was trembling, fear clear in his face.

"...patriots..." Raiden whispered breathlessly.

"But they're gone!" Hal yelled.

Raiden swallowed hard, didn't move otherwise. "...Who knows where these bastards are hiding..."

Hal left it at that, wasn't in the mood to argue.

"Raiden, why am I not allowed to disconnect the left arm?" Sunny then asked. It had bugged her the whole time. She was almost certain that the worm came from there. His shoulder was the only part that was damaged enough to let something to seep through.

"Data storage..." Raiden muttered silently. "It's connected to the brain... don't remove it..."

Sunny huffed. "Fine. But I might have to though. I'll make a back up."

Raiden was too tired to argue. He only had a vague idea of what had happened, only heard bits and pieces of their frantic conversation.

"Removing it causes flashbacks." He muttered silently.

Sunny gave off a displeased sound, but she moved away from her laptop, stretched and took a look at the third one that wasn't connected to anything except its power cord.

Raiden then opened his eyes, not really surprised at how Rose looked at him. Their hands were still almost tangled. The woman let her forehead sink on his, then kisses his cheek. He looked up at her, sighed and slowly tried to sit up. Rose grabbed his shirt to pull him up,  propped a kneed at his back when he threatened to fall over again.

"What now, Sunny?" Raiden asked silently.

"Now we try to get rid of the worm." The girl wasn't looking at him, her eyes glued to the screen and she wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

"I didn't know it was possible for them to affect cyborgs."

Hal adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "You remember what the worms did to the AI's of the patriots?"

Raiden nodded.

"Worms can effect pretty much any software." Sunny explained. "And it's a bother to get rid of them."

"Is it possible to remove this... thing?" Rose now asked.

"It is." Sunny replied. "But I don't have the knowledge about his software and I lack the equipment and knowledge about that. I'm reading through the code at the moment. I know how the worm is working now, still, It's spreading faster than I can work and that's why I think I need to write one that will kill the other."

Raiden ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry Sunny."

"Don't you dare to be sorry." Sunny growled back. "We get sick all the time and don't say sorry for a bad cold or the flu. It's a little more nasty because there's no medicine for it, but there are also up sides to it."

Raiden scoffed. "At least I'm not puking all over the floor?"

Sunny now grinned at him, fear replaced by relief. "Could you even?"

He decided not to give her insight on that. Rose's questioning gaze was enough to wonder if she would ask this question again.

"And now we wait." Hal sighed.

"Can you get Wolf, Hal?" Sunny asked. "Maybe he can help a bit too..."

When Hal had left Sunny turned to Raiden. "It'll happen again. I set a trap, but it won't keep this thing distracted forever... Don't disconnect from the laptops, alright?"

He nodded at her, annoyed and confused now. Rose leaned against him, moving her hand into his again. She wasn't sure what scared her more now. The possible loss of John or the possible Loss of Jack... what if she lost both in the end?

What if all this was just another conspiracy?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> randomness.   
> Writing hours in total for this chapter: about 10 hours.  
> Research time for this chapter: at least 1 day. 
> 
> (researching is the most fun part about writing, for me. That and all the angst. haha. but i can't write angst without having a bit of fluff afterwards... it just doesn't feel right to leave it cruel.)
> 
> Thank you for all the comments again~ Heh it's funny how the theories are so fitting :3 Maybe i was just too obvious haha.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, maybe a bit confusing... ^^"

When Rose woke up she had the worst headache she could have ever imagined. The room was almost completely dark, save for the TV still running and the moon shining through the curtains. She felt dizzy, nauseous, weak. And her head. Why was it hurting so bad? She carefully touched it, felt something warm and wet trickling down her forehead. Alarmed she sat up, fell over right away again. Nearby she heard someone whimper. Sunny was staring at her, eyes wide, tape covered her mouth and she was tied to the chair she had been sitting on. Now she was on the floor, tears constantly  dripping on the carpet.  The three laptops were on the floor, smashed, broken apart. Cords everywhere.

Horror spread inside Rose and she sat up once more. This time it worked slightly better but she felt like she had to throw up.

"Jack!" she tried to yell. Her voice was hoarse, trembled. "Jack!" she pulled herself over to the bed only to find it empty. The sheets were everywhere, torn, blood on them. Rose shook her head to herself. What was going on?

"Sunny..." Rose whispered, carefully took the tape off her mouth. The girl didn't waste a second to wince at the pain.

" They hit your head and then they hit me, and now Jack's gone!"

"What?... Who?..." Rose was confused, carefully untied the girl from the chair. She swayed heavily as she did so, her sight blurred at the edges.

Sunny rubbed her wrists and arms once she was free. "You need an ambulance... it's bleeding really bad." She muttered with her trembling voice and dug around her pocket to find her cell phone. She rarely used the device, found it too restrictive. Now her hands barely managed to find the right buttons on the touch screen. She was shaking, sniffed tears away.

Rose couldn't think properly, maybe because they had hit her head too hard.  "Sunny... what happened?" she urged on, gently grabbing her arms.

The girl let the phone sink. "There was a knock on the door, you went to open up... and then two men stormed inside, both wearing masks. They smashed something on your head and then Raiden jumped off the bed and attacked them... He ripped the laptops down... But that's okay... I can just repair them and..." Sunny sniffed. " They pushed him down, it was so easy! ... That's not supposed to be like that! And then they hit me too... and..."

"Sunny..." Rose said silently, still not fully understanding the situation. "Where is Jack? What happened to him?!" Panic was seeping into her voice now.

"I don't know!"

"How did they look?"

"They had masks on! I don't know!" The girl sobbed. "I don't know..."

Rose nodded, the movement making her world spin. She was pretty sure it was a concussion. Lucky if it wasn't more than that. The terrible howl of broken machines suddenly sounded from the door. It rattled and snapped, squeaked and sounded both horrifying and pitiful. Sunny and Rose both fixed their eyes on the door, neither knowing what to do. The door was opened then and Wolf was visible. What was left of him. The AI looked like it had been hit by a truck, run over a few times and then shot by a rocket launcher. That's what Sunny thought at least.

"Wolf!"

"I apologize." Came his distorted voice as he limped over to Sunny. His right front leg was missing, the other three in terrible condition. "I heard noises and went to investigate. I was surprised by an attacker."

"Who attacked you?!" Sunny yelled now.

Rose had taken the phone and called the ambulance herself, knowing she needed to get this treated no matter how much she wanted to ignore the pain.

"They wore masks, I could not see their faces. However, they spoke in a foreign language."

"What language?!"

"My database has suffered damage, I cannot access that information. However, I have recorded their words. Replaying Message: _'Bewegt eure Ärsche!_ _'_ End of message."

Sunny frowned. She couldn't make sense of the words.

"...German." Rose whispered, holding her head. "That's German."

"How do you know?"

Rose shook her head. "I think I heard this somewhere before... In a movie I think... Ugh..." Rose held her head, leaned against the wall behind her. She couldn't recall the last time she had felt this terrible.

Sunny nodded, then looked over to Wolf. "... You need repairs, Wolf..."

"I am aware. However, we do not have the proper equipment at our disposal. Also, Rosemary has suffered injuries, it would be wise to treat those first."

Sunny slowly stood, sat on the bed. The sheets were torn to shreds and the blood looked fresh even though the stains had dried already.  "Blood..." The girl muttered. "Jack's blood."

"How do you know...?"

"You were on the floor... I'm not bleeding. And there aren't any bodies..."

Rose shivered.  

The two flinched when the door opened silently. Hal walked in, a smile on his face, but it disappeared immediately when he saw Rose and Wolf. Also the absence of Raiden, which didn't make sense to him at all.

"What happened?"

"I don't know..." Rose muttered, holding her head. She really felt terrible. "We got surprised... and Jack's gone... and I don't know..." The woman held her head, hissing in pain.

"You need help, Rose."

"Already called..."

Hal nodded, looked at Wolf, then at Sunny. "Did you get hurt?"

Sunny shook her head. "They knocked me out too... but it doesn't hurt anymore."

Hal left the room then, came back with a first aid kit and dressed Rose's wound.

"Wolf, can you tell if any of them is still nearby?" Sunny asked the AI, inspected the laptops and sighed in frustration when she realized that all three were broken beyond repair. It seemed that whoever had attacked, smashed the laptops using a rather blunt weapon.

"I apologize, I attempted to pursue my attackers. However, in my current state I was unable to keep up with a car."

"It's okay Wolf..." Sunny whispered, her lip trembling when she ran a hand over the AI's head.

\-----

They accompanied Rose to the hospital, waited for her wounds to be properly treated while Sunny was on Hal's Notebook in the waiting room. It was a tiny device compared to her laptop, but it had to do.

"Doesn't Raiden have a tracking device or something?" She asked Wolf. The AI was sitting next to her, occasional sparks sizzling around his exoskeleton.

"It is possible to track down his movement data, however, do to that you would need to get in touch with Maverick. I cannot reach him over the codec, likely because I suffered major damage."

Sunny nodded to herself, typed away on the keyboard and proceeded to hack into the system of the company after a few minutes. She put on her headphones when she managed to locate the codec files and called whoever popped up on the list.

A dark-skinned man greeted her with a deep frown.

"You  have a hole in your security." Sunny muttered. "I'm Sunny. We lost contact to Raiden, I want you to locate him." She was proud of how professional her voice sounded, even though she was so riled up and worried.

"Wait, hold on a minute... Sunny." The man said, obviously confused and slightly irritated. "You are _the_ Sunny, I take it?"

"I am a friend of Raiden." Sunny explained. "He disappeared after we got attacked. We don't know where he went."

"We don't know either, girl." The man sighed deeply. "Look, his data froze shortly after he last called us. We haven't gotten a single update since then."

Sunny bit her lip, fear seeping through now. "How do we find him then?!"

The man held up his hands in an attempt to calm the girl. "We have sent reinforcements. They will sweep the area."

"You think that will help?"

"We will find him. And send us a report of the hole in the security..." The man smirked, ended the call.

Sunny looked at Wolf. "Is he taking this serious?"

"It appears he was trying to cheer you up, Sunny." Wolf replied.

\------

Raiden carefully opened his eyes a crack, listened to his surroundings. His arms were bleeding, he knew that without trying to touch them. Superficial damage, he hoped. It was dark, completely silent. One man was walking around a few meters away. Another on the other side. He kept listening. They paced around, relaying silent messages to each other over the radio. He didn't understand the language.

They had surprised him, that much he remembered. A knock on the door, Rose went to open it. One of them hit her with a crowbar. Was she okay? Raiden took a deep and silent breath, trying to piece it together. He had lunged forward after that, ripped Sunny's laptops down and disconnected from the cords. Sunny screamed, He landed a punch on one of the men's face, managed to sweep him off his feet.

That was all he remembered. Now he was here. Wherever that was. The codec was dead, any other means of communication as well, no GPS data to be accessed. Nothing. His arms were tied around a steal beam, feet tied together, presumably also secured at the beam. He couldn't move either of them without struggling. They appeared to have tied him with steel cables, apparently hoping it would keep him in place for a while. Sadly they were right. This body didn't possess the strength the other had.

The footsteps of a third man came closer. Without warning he was assaulted with a wave of ice cold water in his face. He gasped, coughed a bit, his hair dripping wet and with slight horror he realized that the water was running down his back, to the unprotected area of the exoskeleton.

"Na, Blondchen, schön geschlafen?" a voice taunted.

Raiden didn't understand it, but the tone heavily implied that the man was making fun of him. "What?" he rasped.

The man laughed silently. "Licht an!"

Raiden frowned, winced when suddenly bright neon lights illuminated the room. It was a small square room, concrete walls and floor. Men were standing at the walls, everyone had a different gun, no uniforms. A resistance group maybe, or a hastily thrown together group of half assed fighters that thought they could take a cyborg down. Raiden growled silently.

They had managed just that.

He didn't doubt that these people were responsible for what happened in the hotel room. How had it been so easy to overwhelm him though?

The man in front of him wore a black mask, gray eyes visible behind it. He wasn't wearing any weapons except a small combat knife. He could take the man down if he got his legs free.

A second man walked up to him, stared at him from head to toe, smirked and turned around again. "Du wirst tun was ich dir sage." The man said. "Wenn nicht, wirst du es bitter bereuen." His laugh was cold.

His voice was devoid of any emotion, and Raiden had no doubt that he was used to do things like these, it didn't change the fact that Raiden had no idea what he was saying.

"What are you saying?" Raiden tried.

The two men looked at each other, discussed in the foreign language. One of them threw his arms in the air. One of the men from the walls walked up to them.

"You will obey, otherwise you'll regret it." He said.

"What do you want?" Raiden now hissed. Seven men he could see. Perhaps two or three on the catwalk above him. All with guns and knives. If he got his arms free he could take them out, get their weapons. For that he had to get the arms free first though. The cable was cutting into his wrists. At the moment he was glad that it weren't human hands. It hurt, but the damage could be repaired. If they got the money for it.

"It took quite a chunk of our financials to even get this far." The man explained. "The set up, the missiles. My friend here," The man pointed to someone in the back, "Stiller, had the idea with the computer virus. It appeared to be quite useful in the end. Oh it won't kill you, but we are now in control of your body." The man paced around in front of him.

" We want your cooperation."  He continued. "You have something we want, and we'll take it."

"And what is that?" Raiden growled.

The man kicked his stomach. Raiden grunted, but wasn't really affected by it. "Your body."

Now it dawned on him. That was why they had attacked him. But how did they know where he was? Was it necessary for them to hurt Rose? And what had they done to Sunny?! What would they want with his body? It needed experts to build this, even more to maintain it and it was expensive.

"And if I don't cooperate?"

The man scoffed, spoke to the other two and the stepped aside. The portion of the room he couldn't see got illuminated. Three men with rifles were standing around a chair, all three ready to shoot.

Raiden frowned, the lights were so bright that he could barely see the person on the chair. He needed a second to get used to it. It appeared to be a child, a gray bag covered the head. Raiden couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but he had the strange feeling that he knew that dark blue T-shirt with the Lego-Batman print on it.  

One of the three men in front of him walked over to the child.

The man that had walked up to the boy took the bag and pulled it off his head. The boy was blindfolded, tape over his mouth. Bright blonde hair hanging into his face in filthy streaks, face scratched and full of dirt, he was missing one shoe, a painful looking swelling on his ankle. No one had bothered to treat it.

Anger boiled up inside him. He struggled against the restraints but to no avail, he'd pull his arms out if he tried to free himself. The man standing next to the boy loosened the blindfold and smirked.

Blue eyes fixed on Raiden, and the cyborg held his breath.

John!

The boy whimpered, struggled against the ropes they had tied him with when he recognized the man they had tied to the steel beam.

The masked man next to Raiden smirked. "You don't really have a choice in the matter, but if you don't the boy will die."

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waaah so many comments. Guys you make me so happy! I love reading all your theories and ideas, it's fun! And really cool to see how right some of you are haha.

Then men left the room all at once, left the lights on and locked the doors. Raiden didn't quite understand that purpose, but he couldn't care less at the moment. The boy was still struggling against the ropes, probably cutting his wrists on the unforgiving material.

"Calm down." Raiden said silently, tried to make is voice sound as friendly as possible. He was still furious, but that wasn't the boy's fault.

John stopped struggling, stared at the man. A small car would have fit in the distance between them, it was so close, but Raiden couldn't move away, and he didn't think John was able to get anywhere with the chair and that ankle. His feet barely reached the ground. Had the boy always been so small? Raiden tried to free himself once more, still unable to get the ropes lose.

"I know you have a lot of questions," Raiden said. "I don't know where we are, but I won't let anything more happen to you, I promise."

John nodded slowly, tears streaming down his face, a thousand questions in his eyes. The boy tried to speak despite the tape. Raiden watched him, angry, wished he could do something to help the boy. He yanked on the steel ropes but only managed to make his left shoulder protest with a snapping sound. He felt dizzy for a second after that.

"I'll get us out of here." Raiden smiled.

John nodded slowly, sank back into the chair and let the tears run over his cheeks.

They would pay for hurting the boy, for hurting Rose and for hurting Sunny. They would all pay. The moment he got his hands on a weapon, they would all pay for it.

"Hmm!" John said after a while. Raiden thought it sounded like the boy had tried to say 'dad'.

"Yes?"

John nodded upwards and when Raiden followed the movement he could see a glass roof. It was night, but the room was too bright to see the stars. Otherwise he might have been able to make out their location. He knew John was thinking about something else and he hated to shatter the boy's hopes.

"It's too high. The noise it would make would alert everyone too."

The boy hung his shoulders.

"Did they give you water?"

The boy nodded. Raiden sighed in relief. That was something. Seemed like they hadn't intended to kill the boy just yet.

"Have you seen anything else of this building?"

John shook his head.

"Your foot, did they do that?"

The boy looked at his father for a while, then slowly shook his head again.  Raiden assumed the boy had tripped then. At least they hadn't tied the hurt foot at the ankle but higher up. Maybe that was just to keep the boy from yelling too much, though the tape probably took care of the noise.

"Does it hurt?"

A nod.

Raiden took a deep breath, calmed himself. It was no use to rage now, it would just frighten the boy even more.

"Your friend... Tyler was his name, right? He's alright."

John looked relieved.

Raiden really wished he could have freed himself. In his combat body, he wouldn't have had any problems with his, but this body was just not made for fighting, even ignoring the current damage done to it already.

"It's okay. I'm sorry I'm asking so much. I'm glad I finally found you."

The boy sniffled, wiped the tears on his shoulders.

"They can't keep us here forever." Raiden whispered, smiled at the boy.

After a while the light was shut down, John gave off a surprised squeak.

"I'm still here." Raiden reassured the boy. "I won't leave you alone."

"Hmm."

The cyborg began to struggle against the ropes again. Even loosening them a little could have helped, but they were unforgiving. Silence settled over them, broken by John's silent sniffles and Raiden's occasional grunt when he yanked at the ropes.

The man remembered something from his childhood then. They had tied him to a chair as well, forced him to watch terrible things. He bit his lip, tried to chase away the images. While he was fighting his memories, John must have fallen asleep. The boy was breathing a lot calmer now and didn't respond. Raiden could only imagine how exhausted he must have been.

The cyborg decided to stay alert, focused on the stars and how they moved. It was hard to tell anything from the small patch of glass and the sun was rising before he had found a decent solution to the location problem. John was indeed sleeping, and Raiden struggled against the ropes once more. He knew it was no use, but it kept him occupied.

It must have been around six am when the door flew open and one of the men walked in. He had a bottle with a straw with him to give it to John. He walked up to the boy, lifted his hand apparently to hit the boy.

"If you hit him I'll hit you so hard your great grandchildren will feel it." Raiden hissed at him.

The man smirked, emptied the water bottle over John's head and left the room again.

Raiden felt incredibly guilty then. It had been his fault that the boy didn't get anything to drink now. He had just tried to keep the boy from suffering more.  John had woken up from the water, wiped it in his shirt and stared at the ground.

"I'm sorry... that was my fault..." Raiden muttered silently.

John just shrugged and struggled against the ropes. Raiden really wished he would have taught the boy how to get out of that. He couldn't see how the boy was tied.

"Is the rope tight?"

John gave him a half nod, then shook his head and Raiden filled him in on a few trick on how to get hands out of a rope.

He watched John struggle with the rope. "Relax. I'm here, they won't do anything to you." He promised. And if he had to rip his own arms out, they wouldn't lay a finger on John.

After what seemed to be ten minutes John finally got his arms free. The boy sat up straight, surprised. Winced when he moved his arms in front of his body and carefully peeled the tape off his mouth.

"Dad..." the boy whispered."I got them free!"

"Good." Raiden smiled.

The boy proceeded to work on the ropes tied around his legs, got them loose pretty quickly. He stretched his unharmed leg, winced when he tried to move the injured foot though. Raiden was pretty sure the ankle was badly sprained or even broken. It didn't seem to stop the boy from getting off the chair. He sat down on the ground and carefully crawled over to his father, mindful not to put any weight on the hurt foot.

"I'll free you, okay?"

Raiden couldn't argue with that, he didn't want to stay here any longer, and he had to give John some credit, the boy didn't waste any time with questions. Maybe he was just too surprised though. He couldn't help but see himself in the boy, the struggle even though it would have been easier to give up, the undying will to get what he wanted. It was the first time he realized how similar the boy was to him not just in terms of looks.

"The knot is really tight.." the boy complained after a few minutes. Raiden tried to crouch down to the boy, he didn't get very far as he was tied in a way that made it impossible to move his legs far enough away from the beam so he could get further down. John slowly stood on his unharmed foot and began fumbling with the rope tied around his father's hands.

"Dad... is it bad when you bleed a lot...?"

Raiden sighed. "No, it's still okay." So far he hadn't seen a warning of blood-loss, for now it was still okay.

John proceeded to fumble with the knot, managed to get it loose just a little. Enough for Raiden to yank his hands out of it. He scrapped some of the artificial skin, but didn't care much about it anymore. The body was damaged so badly by now, he would probably have to switch to his combat body for a while, after this was done.

John sat down next to him when he fumbled with the knot on the ropes on his legs.

"You don't have your sword..." John then noted.

"It's okay. Guns will do." Raiden tried to reassure him.

It took a while until he was able to free his legs, but eventually got his feet lose and sat on the ground next to the boy. He then ripped the shirt's sleeves off and used them as a makeshift bandage for the boy's foot.

"Is it broken?"

"Probably." Raiden muttered. "It's okay. Let me worry about that, alright?"

John looked up at the tall man. "Will you stay home for a while?"

Raiden nodded when he picked the boy up and held him tightly.

"You're warmer than usual." John smiled when he wrapped his arms around his father's neck.

The cyborg didn't want to tell him that it was because he was so cold, wished he would have been able to generate more heat in his body to warm the boy up sufficiently.

"I need you to be absolutely quiet, alright?" Raiden said silently, when he walked over to the door. "I might have to fight... if that happens, shut your eyes and hold your ears, understood?"

"Okay..."

He could hear that John wasn't pleased with that, but he hoped the boy would listen. He didn't want him to see what he did with a gun or the sword for that matter, though he wasn't sure how much of it John had already seen anyway.

They had a small advantage. If they really wanted the body they wouldn't want to destroy it, but that didn't mean they wouldn't try to kill him. The body could function without the head. It was an eerie thought, one that had never occurred to Raiden until now.

The hallways were empty and dark, John was clinging to him, no one seemed to be around. Raiden would have thought that they had secured this facility a bit more if they wanted to keep him here. Maybe they hadn't taken into consideration that John wasn't stupid. Or they had just planned all this anyway and he was doing exactly what they wanted. He couldn't help but feel that all of this was staged.

Who could blame him.

"Dad?" John whispered after a while. "Where's mom?"

"Waiting for us to come back." Raiden whispered back, tried to shove his worry about Rose far away. He needed to stay focused now. "Be quiet, alright?"

John nodded, his soft hair brushed over his father's face. It made him smile despite the situation and he held the boy a little tighter. He was so relieved to have John back, mostly unharmed too. But they still had to get out, and he had no radar, no means of communication and no knowledge about the building.

"Running around just as predicted." A man suddenly said behind them. Raiden hadn't heard him at all. Had he been standing there the whole time?

The lights in the hallway turned on, John flinched and Raiden wrapped his arms a little tightly around the boy.

"You're a troublesome fellow, they told me." The man wasn't wearing a mask, his pale face even looked sort of friendly. He was speaking with a heavy accent, very similar to Dok's. And then Raiden finally managed to figure out what language they had been talking in. German.

But they couldn't have brought him to Germany, right? He was sure he hadn't been unconscious for that long.

"What do you want?" Raiden growled at the man.

"I believe they already told you." The man laughed heartily. He seemed to friendly but Raiden couldn't believe that the man had any good intentions.

"Now, they told me that you would try to escape if you got a chance. I see they have been right. But I do not want to keep you here. Let's talk about it." The man made a gesture to follow him, but Raiden refused.

"Oh I don't mean to harm the boy. The men can be a little rough, I apologize for that."

Raiden was confused. They had attacked his family, taken John, killed people and partially destroyed his body, why was this man expecting him to trust him?

"A _little_ might be an understatement." Raiden growled back.

The hallway was tight, barely enough room for two people to walk next to each other, certainly not enough room to fight sufficiently. The stranger didn't have any visible weapons on him either. His dark brown hair was graying at the edges, brown eyes friendly and warm looking. Raiden swore to not get manipulated by that. He knew he fell for things like that, had fallen for that often enough. Rose had been right when she called him naive. Maybe he was just too inexperienced when it came to building social contacts. There were the few people he trusted, and he trusted them with everything.

The man laughed. "My name is Konstantin Jensen. Yours?"

"Raiden." He growled.

"I mean your real name. I have introduced myself with my real name too, have I not?."

Raiden glared at the man. He felt like he was being treated like a child. "Jack."

The man smirked, but it still looked friendly. This man could kill puppies and still look like a harmless person. It was extremely unnerving. John had fallen asleep and Raiden just wanted to get out of this building.

"As I was saying, I want to show you something."

"And what makes you think I will listen to anything you tell me?"

For the first time in the past five minutes the man's expression changed. It was subtle, just a change in the eyes. The man looked down on him, the smile suddenly sinister and eerie. "We are in control of your body, don't forget that."

Raiden scoffed. Frowned when the man fumbled around with a device he had pulled from his pocket. He pressed a few buttons, and Raiden suddenly couldn't move anymore. He was rooted to the spot, body frozen in place. Then, without him wanting it he began walking, following the man and his body wasn't listening to anything anymore. He couldn't speak either, wanted to yell but was unable to. Maybe he should have been glad that the man hadn't made him drop John.

They walked in silence through the long hallway. Raiden was terrified at it. How was it even possible for anyone other than him to control his body? It wasn't impossible, though. The body was a machine, machines were controlled by something. And be it an AI, a human or a human holding a remote, someone was still controlling them.

After a while they reached a staircase that led to an old looking wooden door. The man didn't stop there, he walked through what appeared to be the entrance hall of a giant mansion, then up a staircase that was lined with blue carpet, through another big corridor with expensive paintings on the walls and into a room that was separated in two sections. It was white, completely tiled. It gave the impression  of not belonging here, of being wrong. There was a glass window in the middle, people in white fussing over someone lying in a white bed.

Raiden began to feel sick. What were these people planning?

"You see, my daughter, Grace. She fell I'll a long time ago and her life is now only supported by machines." The man said silently and gestured to the person in the bed. On close inspection the woman looked more like a teenager, thin, pale, sick. Machines were all around her. Raiden couldn't hear the noise they had to make, but he had a very good idea of how it must have sounded. Being on life support that wasn't provided by a cyborg body was noisy, uncomfortable and terrifying. He had his share of that.

"There is a way to save her, however I lack the funds." The man shrugged. "This mansion isn't mine, it belongs to a good friend and all the equipment as well. He used to work for an organization and told me about people experimenting on cyborg bodies that looked like real humans." He explained.

Raiden stared at the man in disbelief. He began to understand the intentions, but he couldn't grasp the concept. Why him?

"You see, her brain is fully intact, but her body is not, I fear. She cannot move on her own, she can't even open her eyes. Without this technology my friend provided, she would be dead already. But this is no life for a teenager."

The man fumbled around with the device in his hands. Raiden stumbled when he was suddenly back at the controls.

"And that's why you kidnap my son, kill people, hurt my wife, and try to force me into cooperating?"

The man looked at him with sad eyes. "Desperate times call for desperate measures." He sighed and put the remote back into his pocket. "As I said, I do not have the funds to provide this. Finding a cyborg with the knowledge about these bodies was not easy either."

"And you think I'll spill secrets just like that?" Raiden growled. Sure he felt pity for the girl lying there, but that still was no reason to try to tear his family apart.

"Oh you have no choice, we have been downloading the coding and other things already. All we are missing now are the blueprints and since they are not available anywhere, we just have to take a look at it ourselves."

Raiden took a step backwards. Now he realized what that man wanted. A cyborg body for the girl, preferably as human looking as possible, with the most advanced technology. He could see why the man was eager to find him. Full body civilian cyborgs were rare, but Raiden wasn't the only one, he knew that.

"This sickness has claimed my wife already." The man muttered. "It will in future take my second daughter too."

Raiden was torn between being angry or feeling pity. He decided on something in between and glared at the man. "You think you can take me apart, figure out how it works, rebuild it and think everything works out fine?!"

"We can't get our hands on the blueprints, so we just take what you have. "

"You are disgusting." Raiden hissed. He did feel sorry for the girl, saw that this was no life for a teenager, but why did they decide to do it like that? Why him?

The man laughed. "Everything is being prepared as we speak."

Raiden knew he had to buy time now. Being controlled by someone was terrifying enough, but now they wanted to take him apart? Probably while he was conscious, apparently also without ensuring life support to him after they were done?

"You want to kill me to save your daughter." He concluded.

The man shrugged. "I don't know who you are, I have never seen you before but you have something I want and I'll take it.

"Being a cyborg isn't fun and games."

The man smiled. "It is certainly better than this." He gestured to the girl behind the glass.

"You'll kill me and your daughter in the process."

"Oh no, I won't."

Raiden was getting furious now. "Doing this at once can kill people!" he shouted. "I barely survived it! And I was a grown man at that time!"

"She would die anyway. This is no life for her, but I could try to make it a little more bearable for her."

"And you'll kill me in the process."

The man smirked. "We have everything that is needed to keep someone alive."

"You have no idea how this works." Raiden hissed. "There's more to it than just take the body away and put a different head on it!"

"Is that so?"

Raiden growled in anger. Why was this man so ignorant?! Why did he go through such measures just to get the body? And not even take the body itself but take the insides and leave it at that. It would take weeks to rebuild that and tons of money. If he even survived it, considering their lack of knowledge about proper care of a cyborg.

"I know a cybernetics expert, he's working with kids. I can give you his number and you can talk to him about it."

The tall man smirked and turned towards Raiden now. He stared down on the slightly shorter man, his brown eyes boring into his. "Didn't I tell you before? I don't have the funds to pay someone for this." His voice sounded twisted, somewhat insane now.

"You were the only person we found that was advanced enough in this technology to use for this project."

"You think I know how it works?!"

"It is your body, is it not? Surely you had the money to get this done. They even used custom parts on you, my men told me. You must have a lot of money."

"You're pathetic." Raiden growled. "It costs a fortune, the maintenance every few days, repairs, upgrades, replacements, nutrition. Malfunctions, errors, phantom pain. The stares, whispers, people hating you without any reason. It doesn't stop when the body is done! It never stops! I'm financially crippling my family with this body!"

The man frowned, seemingly reconsidering his plans now. "But you chose it, didn't you?"

"Let me go." Raiden hissed, avoiding the question. "You'll be killing two people at once."

The man shook his head, fumbled with the remote again. Raiden reached out to snatch it away but was stopped short when his body suddenly lost all balance. He managed to shield John's head before he crashed to the ground, but was left immobile again after that.  Darkness invaded his field of vision an soon swallowed him completely.

Was this it? Was the man really trying to go through with this? Why take on all this trouble for such a simple reason! Was the man just eccentric or insane? Or was there even more to it?

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Priorities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Real Life has been shit for the past few days and i really didn't feel in the mood to write.
> 
> I'm lacking so much skill in fighting scenes. I tried, please tell me what i could improve. :D

He woke to soft sniffling. It was dark, cold. He was sitting on the floor, hands tied behind his back, legs tied together, but this time without him being tied to anything else. It wouldn't take long to get out of that. He was sure that they would use the same trick again should he try to escape again, though. They wanted him to try to escape, he was almost sure of that. For whatever reason. To tire him out maybe, to confuse him even more. To make him do what they wanted him to do. And he was forced to act as their puppet, like all the other times.

"John?" Raiden asked into the darkness.

"Dad!" the boy almost yelled. "Are you okay?!"

"Yeah."

 "Why does this man want your body?!"

Raiden flinched. The boy must have heard a big chunk of the conversation earlier and he seemed to have waited a long time to ask that question. He wasn't surprised, the boy had been right at the source of all the yelling, and he wasn't stupid.  

"I don't know, John. He doesn't understand."

The boy sniffled tears away while Raiden moved his arms in front of him and started to fumble with the rope around his legs.  He silently cursed at the lack of communication. That must have been on purpose too. Didn't they tell him that this worm thing had been made to control him? He just had to get that remote then.

"Did they tie you again?" Raiden asked silently when he had freed his legs.

"No... But I couldn't find you. It's so dark... I thought they took  you away..."

The man slowly made his way over to the boy, it wasn't hard to find him. He sat down next to him. John didn't waste a second to crawl into the man's lap and lean against his chest.

"...Is it really that expensive to be a Cyborg?"

Raiden sighed. "You heard the whole conversation, huh?"

"You yelled." The boy muttered. "It really is expensive, right?"

Raiden was silent for a long moment, he didn't know how to reply to that question. He hadn't been exaggerating with what he had said to the man, but was John really ready to hear the truth about it?

"Don't worry about that."

"But you'll need repairs." The boy argued. "Then then Mom's going to yell at you again."

The taller man stayed silent.

"I won't ask for new toys anymore, okay?"

"John..."

"I know it's not much..."

Raiden shook his head in the darkness. "It's okay."

"But you're more important!" The boy wrapped his arms around his father, listened to the mechanical heartbeat that didn't sound too different from a real one. At least John had never thought that it sounded any different. Overall he didn't understand why everyone acted as if his father was someone they needed to avoid at all costs. John knew what people said about cyborgs, heard a lot of things on the news, but to John the things they said always seemed unreal. His father barely went outside when he was home, and if he did he was hiding his body at all costs.

John was proud of his father and he wanted the whole world to see that, couldn't understand why other people didn't see it.

"Is this man really trying to take you apart?" the boy whispered after a while.

Raiden tried to think about a decent answer to that. It certainly seemed that way, but he really didn't want to tell John that. "I won't let him."

John wrapped his arms tighter around him. "This is no movie... he can't just take people apart. Right? Did he watch too many movies?"

"There are many crazy people out there. Maybe he did." Raiden almost smiled. John sounded as if all this was too absurd to be real. Normal children were like that, he assumed. If this had been him as a child, the whole ordeal would have ended in a massacre hours ago. He shivered at the thought.

"You can beat him, right? I know you can... You're stronger than him."

"This man is no cyborg."

"But it would be self defense, right? In school they said that when someone is threatening you, you are allowed to defend yourself..."

Raiden began to fumble with the rope around his wrists. "They won't understand. You know how people treat cyborgs. You've seen it plenty of times."

John sat in silence then. Most people just stared, others were laughing and pointing fingers, some even said things and the worst kind of people were those that went up to his father and asked him questions. John despised these people. He didn't bring friends home when his father was there, and he didn't ask to go to amusement parks or fairs. There were a lot of cyborgs in some areas, but John had never seen any that was like his father. Most of them just had a cybernetic arm or leg. Sometimes two. Even those acted weird around his father sometimes. John didn't understand what was so different. He had never known his father any differently. His mother had shown him pictures. There weren't many anyway, but John found that his father looked exactly the same, ignoring the scar on his face. John always found that it made him look cooler.

"Sunny said... if it hadn't been for her, you wouldn't be a cyborg." John eventually muttered.

Raiden stopped fumbling with the rope. "Nonsense. They would have done it one way or another."

"Is it true that you almost died?"

The cyborg fell silent. The boy really had heard everything. "...There was a man who saved my life."

"I would have been sad if you did..."

 _'You wouldn't even know me. And maybe the patriots would still be there. Snake would have died for nothing, Meryl would still hate her father.'_ Raiden thought to himself. "It's okay now." He muttered. "We need to get out of here."

The boy agreed silently and Raiden finally managed to get out of the ropes. Even if he just got John out, the boy needed to be somewhere safe. He would manage somehow, but John needed to be safe.

"I'm hungry..." John whispered when Raiden was thinking about an escape plan after he had moved his arms around the boy in hopes to warm him up a little.

"I know..." The man needed a lot of willpower not to growl in anger. When was the last time John had seen real food?! "I'll cook something nice once we're home."

"Okay!"

Raiden smiled, still slightly amazed at how the boy handled the situation in general. He would have expected the boy to be shocked, crying more than he actually did and complain way more, things normal children would do, but he was silent and just endured it. Raiden had the feeling that it would come later, after this was over. When the boy realized what had happened, when he didn't have to be strong anymore.

"Dad?"

"Hm?"

"I want to see where you work."

The cyborg was surprised, that came out of nowhere. "I don't think Mom would allow that."

"But Boris has called mom a bunch of times... Can't we all go visit him at least? I want to thank him for all the action figures. In person."

Raiden sighed. "I'll talk to him about it." He had told Boris a bunch of times to stop with the gifts for John, but Boris always managed to make him take one of these action figures anyway. John must have had about twenty of them now. He slightly wondered where the man got them, but forced his thoughts back to the current situation then. This was no time for chit chat.

The man slowly stood, picked up his son with the movement. It took him a while to find a wall and a door that actually opened, but once he had opened the door he was in a bright corridor again. John grumbled when the light hit his eyes and hid his face in his father's shirt.

It took Raiden a few minutes to locate the staircase. It was the only way he knew that would definitely lead to an exit. A window would do, anything that lead outside and away from here. He just hoped he got far enough away to get out of range of that remote. How far did it reach anyway? Where they already monitoring him when he was in the hotel? Had they chased him?

When he reached the entrance hall he half crouched at the wall. It was brightly illuminated, almost no dark spots to hide in. The windows were high and he would have to shatter them to get out of there. He kept that as a last resort. The front door was about ten meters to his left in the middle of an open area.  So far he couldn't see anyone, but that didn't mean anything.

He tried to get closer to the staircase when an alarm went off. He cursed silently, really missed the AR-Vision now. Had that been an infrared sensor? Was it coincidence? Was it even related to him? He had his answer when masked men stormed the entrance hall. It had been his fault and they had spotted him in a matter of seconds.

John squeaked in fear when a bullet whizzed past Raiden's head and hit the wooden handrail of the staircase.

"Shh." Raiden tried to reassure his son. He slowly set the boy on the floor, stood and held his hands up. He had no intentions of giving up, but he would trick them just like they tricked him. If they played dirty, he could too.

"In die Mitte!" one of the men yelled and pointed his gun in front of the staircase.

Raiden didn't understand the words, but the gesture explained it. "Don't move. Stay here, cover your head and don't look." He whispered to John before he slowly made his way over to the middle of the entrance hall. He needed to get his hands on a weapon. Somehow. They all were out of reach, fancy moves could endanger John and he wasn't sure how the body would cope with too much strain now anyway. Plus the fact that they could shut it down whenever they pleased. He assumed they knew that.

"Und bleib da!" The man that had spoken before yelled. Raiden still had no idea what he was saying, just assumed it was the same everyone else said. _'Hands up, don't move'_ it was always the same. Especially with those wannabe kids that couldn't even hold a gun the right way. They were amateurs he realized then. Thought they were superior, thought they could take him down. They were open, no formation. Did they get paid to be here?

"Auf den Boden!" another yell.This time Raiden had no way of figuring out what he said. He looked up at the man who had spoken as he readied his gun.

 _'So slow'_ he thought.

"Auf den Boden!" the man repeated firmly, but his voice was trembling slightly. He pointed the gun at him. The man was shaking, he wouldn't even hit a house like that. Was he afraid? Raiden couldn't care less as he glanced at the others. Neither of them was holding their gun in an effective way. They all knew how to shoot, but they didn't seem to have any knowledge about how to actually hit what they aimed at.

"Ich sagte auf den Boden!"

"Gib es auf, der versteht dich nicht." A second man said behind Raiden. He stood where the staircase parted to connect the left and right side of the balcony that led to other rooms.  Five meters give or take.

A back flip was all it took.

Raiden turned in a swift movement, lunged forward and landed on his hands, he used the movement to crash his legs down onto the enemy, knocked him out while he was doing so and was holding his gun firmly in his hands. The whole move hadn't taken longer than two seconds.

The men were yelling now, barking orders at each other. They pointed their guns at him. They were on edge, slow and foolish. He wasn't eager to kill any of them, but if worst came to worst he would do it. One of them on the far left aimed at him, but then lowered himself a bit, aimed where John was sitting.

A shot rang, the man fell off the balcony, holding his leg, writhing in pain.

"Du Bastard!" another yelled.

Raiden wondered if this word was the same in every language when they opened fire at him. The body hindered him in many maneuvers, but he managed to dodge the greater deal of the bullets, shot whoever had to reload or aimed at John. Grunted when the bullets lodged itself into the boy. It was okay, he tried to tell himself. As long as they didn't hit his head everything was okay.

Raiden leapt up the staircase to the left, knocked out the two men in front of him when he lowered himself to dodge their bullets and lunged at them to crash them into the ground. The other six or seven behind them were riled up, two jumped over the rail, one of them landed with a sickening crack.

They were scared. And Raiden didn't even have the blade.

He knocked out the other men then was about to jump over the rail to take care about the man who had fled, when he saw something flash into the direction of John. It clattered to the ground.

A grenade.

"Throw it back!" Raiden screamed as he made his way over to the boy as fast as possible. He jumped over the rail, rolled over the floor and used the movement to get over to John. The grenade flew past him and exploded near the rail where the other men were standing.

Raiden felt a sting when the men fell down, most of them screaming in pain. What had he done? What had he made John do?! Why?!

John looked at him, face pale and eyes wide. Raiden didn't know if the boy was thinking the same at the moment, it would come, sooner or later

"Verschwindet! Wir sind nicht zum Sterben hergekommen!" someone now screamed.

They fled, took the injured with them. The lack of any bodies at least implied that no one had died. Raiden could only stare at the boy, horror spreading inside him. Why had he told John to do that? Couldn't that have been avoided?

"Did you get hurt?" Raiden asked silently as he crouched down, cursed the cracking voice. This was no time to break down. They had to get away!

"N-No..." the boy's voice was trembling, he was shaking like a leaf. Raiden was about to pick his son up when a voice disturbed them.

"My daughter has passed away." The man from earlier said. What was his name again? Jensen? He was standing at the far right of the balcony, something that looked like a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

Raiden cursed under his breath. Even his combat body had trouble with those, who knew what they would do to this body.

"That's all your fault!" the man yelled. "You'll pay for that!" the man fired the launcher. It turned out to be a homing missile.

Raiden grabbed John, held him tightly as he leapt out  of the way in the last moment. The wall behind them was hit and debris rained down on them. The boy was clinging to him, whimpered in fear. The cyborg used the time the man needed to reload  to make a run for the front door, had to dart to the right at the last second as the next missile blew the door apart.

"Next time I won't miss!"

Raiden ignored him, held John closer, hoped the boy wouldn't be scarred for life after this was over when he leapt over the ruble that had once been the door and found himself in a narrow path that was lined with a high brick wall on both sides. Far away he saw the blinking lights of a helicopter, headlights of cars somewhere in the distance. There seemed to be a road down there. He made a run for it, there was no one else he could go.

This body wasn't as fast as the other, a ninja-run was impossible to achieve and behind him he could hear the missile go off. Time seemed to slow down, Raiden knew he couldn't dodge, there was no way to go. Getting hit full on would endanger John as well. He would get hit, the man had been aiming for him. He had to save John at all costs!

"Lie down flat, hands over your had." He said when he eased the boy on to the ground as gently and close to the wall as possible while running as fast as he could in  this body. He didn't see if the boy had landed safely, had no way of checking it either when the blast hit him full on and propelled him into the wall, leaving a crater.

His yell echoed over the field even after he had slumped into the ground and an eerie silence spread over the mansion and it's property. In the distance faint sniffling could be heard, men were yelling. Where those voices he knew? He couldn't tell when his vision was swarmed by slimy blackness that seemed to rob all of his senses, stole his breath and every sensation with it.

_'Rose...'_

 

 

 


	11. Null and Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really not sure about the last two chapters... But I got this far, stopping now would be kind of unfair to all you guys. I really love all your comments, i can't say that often enough. You are so awesome!  
> Thank you!
> 
> This one is a rather angsty chapter. It wasn't easy to write it.

Rose was nervously flipping pages in the novel she had found in one of the bookshelves in the hotel room. She read one sentence, shut the book, looked around, opened the book again. Her hands were trembling, worry and fear always present since she had woken up from the attack. The headache was subsiding, she had been lucky it was just a slight concussion. Still, walking made her feel dizzy and so she was sitting on the ground, leaned against the wall and kept flipping pages in the novel. She had no idea what it was about, couldn't concentrate on whatever she had read already. On occasion she sighed deeply, fought back tears. The bed-sheets had been replaced after a bit of persuading the staff that she had no idea how that happened. Eventually they believed her, maybe also because of the wound on her head. It was treated now, even needed stitches but it wasn't as bad as it looked.

She wasn't worried about the injury.

Her gaze wandered around the room, blurred for a second and focused again. Something that would pass soon, she knew that from the last time. Her head was bursting with questions, each of them only worried her more the moment she thought about them consciously. That was why she had picked up the book in the first place. Distraction.

But all the tricks she knew, the small things to do to keep the mind occupied, didn't work. When she wasn't paying attention she would think about it. It hurt, it made the tears spill and the worry robbed her of any sense of rationality. 'What if' was not just a possibility now. Everything she thought about could have happened. And where was he anyway?

Where did he go? Did they kidnap him as well? Was he chasing them?

Rose ran a trembling hand through her hair. Was he hurt? Dying somewhere?

She shook her head slightly. "He's okay." She whispered towards the closed book. It had a nice cover with swirls and flowers. She forced herself to focus on that. Maybe the curtains in the bedroom could have a pattern like that once they finally got around to actually chose them. Rose sighed. It would only remind her of this. If their house was still there anyway. She hadn't heard about any more missiles in the area, but that didn't mean anything. Had she even locked the front door?

Jack had been back after she had left. Had he locked the front door? Rose looked at the sheath on the floor next to her. He wouldn't have left it behind if he had chased them. The blade was a part of him, he didn't fight without it unless he had no choice. She knew that. He wouldn't have a problem with a gun though, she knew that too.

A soft knock on the door made her look up. "Y-Yes?" she rasped. Her voice was hoarse, trembling.

Sunny peeked into the room with a sad smile. She had a cup with her that smelled like tea. "They said you shouldn't have coffee, so I brought you tea." The girl explained silently and crouched down in front of Rose.

The woman took the cup, thanked Sunny and looked at her for a while. She had oil-stains on her face, her hair tied into a messy ponytail.

"How's Wolf?" Rose asked out of courtesy. The Ai had been in terrible condition, Sunny herself was surprised that he even managed to tag along for so long until his systems gave out. Willpower she had called it.

"He'll be okay. The body is ruined, but Wolf himself is fine." Sunny smiled. "I hooked him up to Hal's notebook, so that he isn't completely alone."

Rose smiled warmly at her and took a sip of the steaming liquid. It was warm, calming and sweet. Maybe a little too sweet for Rose's taste, but she wasn't going to complain about it. It helped chasing away the terrible thoughts that filled her mind.

"Are you sure you want to be alone, Rose?" The girl asked after a while. "When I'm worried or sad it helps when someone is there."

Rose nodded, agreed with her. It was no use to drown in sadness and worry. It only stressed her more.  Slowly she stood, held on to the wall until she was used to the slight dizziness. It wouldn't just subside. She had to get used to it until it was gone in a few days.

Sunny stayed close to her when she was walking through the corridor, sword sheath in one hand, tea cup in the other. The girl found it strange to see Rose with that weapon. It didn't feel right.

When they reached the room Hal and Sunny stayed in, Rose immediately noticed the scent of machine oil. One of the windows was open, but it helped little. It also smelled lightly burned. On the ground, spread on paper towels and newspaper was Wolf's body. Lifeless, unmoving. Rose needed a second to remember that the AI itself was fine. Dread filled the pit of her stomach.

"He can't speak, the Notebook doesn't have the capability for that, but he can hear us and he can reply in text." Sunny explained and gestured to the notebook on the table under the window.

Rose shivered. "Alright." She sat down on a chair when Sunny dug around in a toolbox and pulled out screwdrivers and cables, circuit boards and all kinds of other things Rose had no name for. She had always found it interesting that Wolf's body looked so similar to Jack's combat body. She almost dropped the cup at that thought. It felt like someone had stabbed her for a split second.

Where was Jack? Why could no one reach him? She had called his cell-phone, the codec, everything. She couldn't even get through.

"You can talk to him, if you want." Sunny said when she opened up a panel on Wolf's body and inspected the circuits. "...Wolf Really, what did they hit you with? How did you even manage to move! The circuitry is completely fried!"

Rose looked at the screen of the laptop on the table next to her. There was a small semitransparent box connected to it, colorful lights blinked behind the cover, some in a rhythm, others whenever they seemed fit.

  _'Homing Missile'_ popped up on the screen. Rose read it aloud and Sunny sighed deeply.

"...I see..." Sunny muttered to herself. "They are nasty..."

Rose dropped the cup then. It landed on the carpet, red tea spilling over it. She made a move to take care of the mess, but Sunny had already thrown a few paper towels on it. Rose took a deep breath, scolded herself for being so on edge.

"Rose, are you alright?" Sunny asked, worry clear in her voice.

"Yeah... I'm sorry for the mess."

"It's okay." Sunny smiled at her. Her hands were trembling as much as Rose's did. "I'm worried too... but working on Wolf keeps me from thinking too much. I'm sure he's fine. He always gets out of these things. Always."

Rose nodded. Sunny was right. She had to believe in him.

"Rose, can you hold this open for me? The hinge is broken and it falls down all the time." Sunny asked and demonstrated the broken hinge as she let go of the panel and it dropped into its closed position. The woman nodded and slowly sat on the floor, took the panel into her hands after Sunny had opened it again

"Thanks." Sunny smiled. "I think I can repair the circuit board. You should be able to speak again then, Wolf."

A _'Thank you.'_ Popped up on the screen.

"I know you don't like this, I really hate to take your speech away..."

_'It was necessary. However, I would appreciate if I could return to my body as soon as possible.'_

Rose shivered once more, watched Hal as he stepped out of the bathroom toweling his hair dry. "Ah Rose. How are you feeling?"

"Better." She muttered silently. Physically she was feeling better, but otherwise she couldn't really say there had been any improvement. She watched Sunny work on Wolf as Hal sat down on the chair and flipped through his phone in search of something. Rose almost dropped the panel she was holding when her own cell phone rang in a tune she had set so she would know right away who was calling.

Maverick.

It had been a while since they had last called, usually only to inform her that her husband was still alive and that there was no need to worry about the injuries he had sustained. Rose dreaded the phone calls she got from there.

Sunny took the panel when Rose turned away to pick up the call.

"Hello?" She asked silently, slightly afraid of what they would tell her.

"Rosemary?" Asked a friendly sounding voice with a Russian accent.

Boris was a nice person, didn't worry about getting his hands dirty, always tried to find a good solution for everyone. And he liked John a lot. The man had visited once or twice, was genuinely interested in how their family was doing.

"Y-yes."

"We have made out the general location of your husband."

Rose let go of the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "You found him?"

"Not yet, but we got an automated GPS signal earlier. It gave us a general location. The area seems to be highly secured, but we will find him." The man didn't sound worried at all. She could imagine him smiling, thought he would pat her shoulder if she had been next to him.

"Thank goodness..." Rose whispered.

"However," Boris continued. "We do not know what state he is in as he was clearly unable to contact us directly."

"You mean-"

"The signal is an emergency measurement. It is activated in extreme situations of distress. There is a possibility that he sustained severe injuries. I do not mean to frighten you, but keep that in mind."

Rose nodded to herself, goose bumps spreading over her arms. She felt cold and alone, helpless and overall as if something really didn't want their little family to be happy.

"Our reinforcements have infiltrated the Area one hour ago. I will call you when we have secured him."

"Alright..." Rose whispered, let the phone sink when the call ended.

Sunny and Hal were looking and her, both with questioning glances.

"It seems that they know where Jack is... they call again when they found him..."

Sunny's eyes lit up. "That's great!"

Rose nodded slightly. "Yes... yes it is..."

"Rose, what's wrong?" Hal asked, realizing that there was more to it.

The woman leaned against the wall. "The signal was sent automatically... he might be injured..."

The mood tensed again. Sunny continued to work on Wolf but more silent and slower than before. It seemed that she had lost all motivation. Rose glanced at the sheath she had put on the table, even more worried than before.

Sunny sighed deeply after a while, stood and walked over to the notebook. "I repaired the circuit board for your voice..."

_'You appear to be upset'_

_'I am'_ Sunny typed back. _'Is there some requirement that has to be met so that it triggers the signal?'_

Wolf didn't reply right away. The AI was directly connected to the notebook and a reply didn't take more than a second, but he paused. Long enough to make Sunny think that he was thinking very carefully about his next words.

_'I assume this GPS signal was a distress signal that was sent automatically.'_

Sunny had begun to reply but Wolf just continued to write. _'It triggers when all systems fail, to ensure recovery. This signal can only be sent once but it can ignore basic jamming. There is a security protocol that ensures safety to the brain, however, as you already know, this system can only run for about two hours. After that there is no chance of recovery.'_

Sunny nodded to herself, suppressed tears and took a deep breath.

"Please disconnect from the laptop. I'll put you back into your body."

 _'Disconnecting in 5 seconds.'_ Appeared on the screen.

Sunny waited fifteen before she carefully disconnected the AI from the notebook and carried the box back to the canine shaped exoskeleton on the carpet. She opened a panel close to the head and carefully inserted the box into the designated socket before she secured the cables where they belonged.

"Can you hear me, Wolf?" Sunny asked after a moment.

"Affirmative." The mechanical voice replied. It was back to normal, the slight mechanic tone to it but no longer distorted or skipping pitches.

"I'll work on the rest then... just so that you can move around. I took what was salvageable from my laptops... it'll have to do until we can do proper repairs."

"Thank you, Sunny."

Sunny shook her head. "You're a good friend and it's painful to see you like this."

"I was not damaged. The damage only affected the body. There is no need for concern."

The girl swallowed her tears and nodded firmly, then her gaze wandered to Rose and back to the notebook where the conversation with Wolf was still visible. She was beginning to have serious doubts about Raiden still being okay. He would have contacted them by now if he had any chance to do so.

Rose slowly stood and closed the window when it began to rain again. She stared out into the night for a moment, growled a silent curse and sat down again.

"Sunny, have you found out anything more about John at least?"

The girl shook her head when she took a screwdriver and repaired the hinge of the broken panel Rose had held earlier. "My program ran into a dead end... It got narrowed down to 4 countries, but then it went up again... I think I made a mistake in the coding. I'm sorry..."

"It's okay. You helped a lot..."

Sunny forced a smile on her face when she wiped her hands in a cloth and looked for her gloves. Rose was about to reach for them when her cell phone rang again with the tune she had set for Maverick. Her heart raced when she reached out to accept the call. She begged for good news in her mind, anything but what she feared. Anything.

"We have found him." Boris' voice was silent, soft.

Rose held her breath. Something was off. Definitely off. Why was Boris silent? Why didn't he say more?

"We have also found your son." Boris continued then. "He is has sustained minor injuries, but he will be fine."

Rose nodded, didn't realize Boris couldn't see it. John was alright! They had found the boy! But all her relief was shadowed by one question.

"...What about Jack...?"

More silence. The man took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "He is alive..." Boris muttered slowly, carefully thinking about his words. There was concern in his voice, maybe a hint of anger too.

Rose felt her insides twist with dread. "But...?"

"We  have collected Doktor on our way, he will try anything he can, however, the damage done might not be repairable. Doktor could not say for certain."

"What are you saying?!" Rose then yelled with a sudden sob that surprised her. She hadn't felt the tears coming, didn't realize that all of it was waiting to be let out.

"Please calm down." Boris tried. "It is best you see for yourself. Doktor can explain better."

He told her where they were staying and ended the call. Rose pressed the phone to her chest as sobs shook her. She didn't care about the worried glances of Hal and Sunny, couldn't care. John was fine, she tried to cling to that thought.

"Rose..." Sunny said silently, slowly made her way over to the woman and hugged her tightly. Rose was such a strong woman, she always kept her cool but the past days were so strange to Sunny, everyone was acting weird.

"Th-They found John." Rose managed to say after a while. "He's alright..."

Sunny's eyes lit up, but her relief was stifled when she realized that wasn't the reason why Rose was crying like that.

"I... I don't know about Jack... they found him too..." Rose shook her head. "I don't know... I need to go to him... he's... it's..." rose swallowed hard. "I think it's bad... really, really bad."

Rose stood slowly, swaying heavily. Hal almost stumbled over Wolf when he tried to steady the woman.

"I'll take you." Hal offered, and helped her over to the door.

Rose told him the location when Sunny crawled into the car. She had reconnected Wolf to the Notebook again, to be able to take him with her. There was no way she would leave him alone in that hotel room now.

Hal drove in silence, brows furrowed. Rose didn't know what he was thinking, but he looked worried. She was clinging to her cell-phone, wasn't sure if she wanted it to ring or not. A call might bring bad news and she didn't want any of that. She watched the streetlights whizz by, listened to the soft music that seemed to know how she was feeling. When was the last time she had felt like this?

Sunny was typing away on the notebook behind her, holding a silent conversation with Wolf that she didn't want anyone to witness.

 _'...the body is destroyed, right?'_ She asked the AI.

_'It appears that no one has uploaded a report to the network yet. I cannot say for sure.'_

_'It's okay... if it's really that bad, they have better things to do than writing reports...'_

_'Agreed. What would you do if-_

_'I don't want to think about that.'_ Sunny replied before Wolf had finished typing. He wasn't really typing, one word just appeared after the other.

 _'But at least John is fine.'_ Sunny typed.

The girl looked up when Hal drove over an uneven patch towards a dimly lit area. Cars were parked there, as well as two trailers with Maverick's insignia on them. She was impressed. That company really cared about their employees, she assumed. Every company should've been like that, she wished. Heavily armed Guards were pacing around.

"They really didn't take any chances." Hal muttered when he parked the car.

Rose was out before the car had fully stopped. She stumbled, dizziness swarming her for a second before she was able to walk in a straight line. A few fold up chairs had been placed around a table and oil lamp placed on top of it. It was a cold night, she hadn't thought about her jacket, didn't care for anything.

A guard walked up to her.

"Miss, you can't-"

Rose  glared at him. "Where is he?!" She had no energy left to be friendly, she would snap at anyone now.

A broad man walked up to the guard and dismissed him. Rose needed a moment to recognize Boris. His smile was warm but his eyes full of concern.

"Rosemary." He greeted her, took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. Rose only nodded, let the man lead her to one of the trailers. A boy was sitting on a chair in front of it, dressed in the company's jacket that was way too big for him. His foot was bandaged, propped up on a box and a pillow, surrounded by icepacks. The boy had his eyes focused on a laptop while squeezing the contents of a juice box into his mouth.

"Mom!" the boy shouted when he noticed Rose.

"John!" Rose didn't waste a second when she ran over to the boy, took him into her arms and held him as tight as possible. She ran her hand through his tangled hair, kissed it.

"Are you alright?" Rose asked, inspected the boy's face. Scratches, nothing that wouldn't heal. And the foot, but that would heal too.

"I think so. They said I'll be okay... but the ankle is broken... and... Dad..." The boy's blue eyes filled with tears.

"We wanted to take him to a hospital, but he refused." A blonde woman said as she walked up to them.

She was dressed in a hoodie, a too big jacket over it and a cup of coffee firmly in her hands. Her hair was tied in a bun, strands falling out of it. Her makeup was smudged and she looked quite tired. She reached a hand out towards Rose.

"Courtney. It's nice to meet you... though the circumstances... aren't the greatest."

Rose nodded, hastily shook the woman's hand and stared firmly into her green eyes. "Where is he?"

Courtney gestured to the Trailer John was sitting in front of. "Doktor doesn't let anyone in. He said he'll inform us if anything happens... it... seems pretty complicated..." She looked away, her hands trembling slightly.

Rose slumped down heavily on a chair next to John, still clutching her cell-phone. "What happened...?" she whispered, eyes glued to the sandy ground below. They had set this up in the middle of nowhere. Maybe she would have been surprised if she had any focus left on anything other than Jack.

"We don't know." Courtney muttered and sat down as well, placed the coffee cup on the table. Too close to the edge, Rose thought but she couldn't be bothered to waste a second thought on it.

"We got the signal and made our move..." Courtney took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "It's scary how fast things can turn..."

Rose nodded, thought that the woman didn't have much experience yet.

Boris walked over to them, handed John a donut and patted Courtney's shoulder. "Go get rest. There is nothing you can do."

Courtney took a deep breath, grabbed her cup and slowly stood. She walked towards a trailer to the left, got almost run over by a dark skinned man who slipped through between the two trailers.

"Oh ... Kevin." The woman muttered, slipped past him and climbed into the trailer.

The man walked up to Boris, got a headshake to the unspoken question and turned to John. "Here you go." Kevin smirked when he handed the boy a DVD to watch on the laptop in front of him.

"Thank you..." John mumbled and eyed the case.

Rose glanced at the cover. A Disney movie. The woman looked at Kevin, confused.

"I went to every store in the area this is the only  kid's movie found.." Kevin shrugged.

Rose looked at her son who eagerly inserted the DVD into the laptop and navigated through the main menu.

"He didn't say anything about what happened..."

Rose wasn't surprised. It was normal. John was probably trying to understand it himself. Who knew what he had seen and what had happened exactly. This wouldn't be over in a few days. Rose was slightly worried that she would have to deal with more than just John, though.

Boris, Kevin, Rose and John all turned when the door of the trailer behind them suddenly opened and a pale looking man  in his mid fifties stepped outside. He met the eyes of the four, gave them a half smile, but it wasn't enough to tell anything by it. He looked tired, exhausted even and sort of sad, Rose thought.

The man shoved his glasses up his nose, took a deep breath. "He is in critical condition... The body was almost completely destroyed. I did what I could. He has not regained consciousness yet. I could also only do very basic repairs here." Doktor eyed Rose and John for a moment. "It is not a pleasant sight." He warned.

Rose nodded slowly and stood. John was looking at her, grabbed the jacket around her shoulders. "Mom..."

"I'll go see him." Rose muttered.

"I want too..." The boy looked at her. "Please!"

Rose crouched down in front of him and shook her head. "I come get you after the movie." She promised.

"But..."

"It will be okay. He will be fine." Rose kissed his forehead, stood again and walked around the table to enter the trailer. Doktor helped here inside and shut the door before he went over to a curtain in the dimly lit trailer.

Words could have not prepared her for what she saw when the man shoved the curtain aside.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some body horror in the beginning...

Machines. That was the first thing she saw.  Machines everywhere, some she knew, others were foreign to her. She then also noticed the noise these devices made. She focused on the screens displaying all sorts of data that made no sense to her, then another. Respiration had been taken over by an external machine, apparently all other life support as well. Rose took a step backwards when she was losing balance.

Doktor gently helped her over to a chair closer to  the man lying the midst of all the cords, electrodes, tubes and cables. Rose sat down slowly, wide eyes focusing on the blond hair, wandered down to the face. It was scratched, blood on it. His mouth was open a crack, the jaw dislocated. He neck was scraped, the artificial skin burned, exoskeleton damaged below. His left shoulder was almost completely gone. Cords were hanging out from there, a faint trail of blood following them. The right shoulder was there, upper arm there, rest missing.

Rose swallowed hard when she focused on what should have been a torso. She felt sick. Tears burned in her eyes. The legs were completely gone, half of the torso as well, cords and cables sticking out. Rose furrowed her brows deeply. Who had done this? Why had they done it?

The sobs came out of nowhere. She cradled her head in her palms, let the tears run freely and didn't care about the man that was pacing around behind her, typing things into laptops and flipped pages in books.

Why? That was the only question in her mind. Why would anyone do this?

Maybe she was glad that most of his body was a machine. At least there was a chance he would survive, but Rose couldn't tell how big that chance was. She knew they had changed his jaw a bunch of times, switched him to different bodies. But all of this had been done in a secure Environment. They knew what they were doing there. What she as looking at now was the work of someone who had lost their mind. How could they do this?

What had he ever done to deserve any of this?

"I really cannot do anything more." Doktor eventually said. His voice was silent and Rose had to suppress her sobs to understand him.

"All the delicate work torn to shreds... He must have been lying there for a while when they found him." Doktor explained. "The boy was next to him, I can only imagine how shocking it must have been."

Rose froze. John had seen him like this?

"They're tough." Doktor smiled then. "The boy was so calm when they reached them. He insisted that he would beat everyone up who dared to hurt Raiden."

Rose chuckled trough her tears, still shocked that John had seen this at all. How did this all fall into place? She had no idea.

"Will he be okay?" Rose then asked when she looked up, braced herself for what she would see once she did. It was still gruesome and terrifying, but she was only upset at who had done this. Revenge was something she usually didn't know, but she wanted to hurt who had done this. Make them feel the same pain.

"Raiden... is a fighter." Doktor muttered. "He never gives up... that is one of the many things I noticed about him. He appeared to be sort of conscious until they found him. The boy said he was talking to him."

Rose nodded to herself.

"I have worked on many cyborgs but he surprises me all the time." The man smiled. "Disconnecting him from this body might be the best solution, I do not wish to cause any more distress to him at the moment though. Arrangements have been made to move the combat body to this location so that he won't be without any means of movement or communication when he wakes up."

"...this body is destroyed beyond repair, isn't it?" Rose asked then, feeling a sting. It had taken so much money to pay it. So much trouble, the debt. The other body belonged to maverick. Would they leave him without a body that actually belonged to him?

"I am afraid it is." Doktor muttered. "Most parts have been recovered, there is still a team out looking for the rest. Most of them are destroyed beyond repair. It would be cheaper to create a new body than to repair this one."

Rose pulled the jacket closer over her shoulders. Jack would be devastated. More bills, more pressure... another new body. Weeks of getting used to it, bugs, glitches that needed to be taken care of, weeks of actually building it to suit his needs.

"It'll cost a fortune..." Rose whispered.

Doktor stayed silent. He knew about their financial issues, knew how much Raiden despised necessary repairs. And now the body that belonged to him had been destroyed.

Doktor couldn't help but wonder if the man was a magnet for bad luck.

Rose eventually fell asleep on the chair, too exhausted to care about all the noise around her. She had slept through most of the night, woke only when someone placed a hand on her shoulder. Her head snapped up and for a moment she hoped it would have been Jack, but it was the blonde woman from last night. Courtney.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you..." she almost whispered. Her makeup was still smudged, her hair still messy, Rose didn't think she had slept one minute. "I went to buy some food for everyone... I thought you might like something too."

Rose shook her head, but got up anyway. She needed to get some fresh air, still didn't want to leave Jack alone. She followed Courtney , glanced back at her husband before she left the trailer.

The sun was warm, it was just past nine in the morning, some guards paced around. Sunny was sitting next to John and Kevin at a table. They seemed to fight over a bun. Hal was nowhere to be seen. Rose walked up to them, met Kevin's eyes.

"Morning, Mom." John smiled at her. "Good morning..." it felt so wrong. John had seen all this and he was completely fine. It didn't feel right at all.

Sunny stared at her, a thousand questions in her eyes. Rose didn't want to bring it up now. She wasn't hungry either.

"How's dad?"

Rose flinched. Nothing had changed, Jack was still unconscious, still in critical condition. The only thing that kept him alive where all the machines. The was depending on machines even when he was fine, but they weren't looking this gruesome, smaller, more efficient maybe. "Better." She lied.

John's eyes lit up. "Can I go see him later?"

"Later." Rose nodded. She didn't want John to see his father like that. It had been night when they were found, chances were that John hadn't realized how bad it actually was. But she knew her son better. John picked up subtle hints and built his own conclusions around them.

The woman paced around for a bit, grabbed a cup of coffee and went back into the trailer once she had finished it. She couldn't care less about her head now. Doktor smiled at her, but didn't say anything when she returned to her place on the chair. There wasn't anything she could do. Carefully she reached out and gently ran a hand over his hair. He looked so weak and vulnerable even without taking the state of the body into consideration.

A single tear rolled over his cheek, Rose  couldn't tell if he was in pain or if he was actually conscious. Maybe it was both, or neither. She kissed his forehead, mindful not to get tangled in all the cords and cables.

Doktor came over, checked the screens, wrote down something and watched them for a moment. Raiden had become a friend, wasn't just a client anymore. It pained the cybernetics expert that he couldn't do anything at the moment.

Rose frowned when she saw Jack's eyelids quiver. Was he awake after all? Waking up? Doktor had seen it too, put the pen and the notebook aside and came closer.

"Raiden, can you hear me?" He asked, voice a bit louder than usual.

A twitch ran through the mutilated body, pale blue eyes snapped open, tried to focus on anything, and closed again. A faint sound came from the body, almost as if he was trying to speak. The beeping noise sounded a bit more frantic now.

"You will be fine." Doktor tried to reassure.

Another noise that might have been a word but was too distorted to be understood. Rose felt incredibly cold all of sudden.

"Don't speak. I will explain." Doktor muttered and began to explain what had happened as detailed as he could. Raiden slipped back into unconsciousness before the older man had finished.

"He can't speak." Rose noticed in horror.

Doktor nodded, tapped his chin as he was trying to find a solution. "The voice-box has sustained damage as well. If he wakes up again before the other body is here, I will try to repair it."

Rose nodded, trembling again now. "How is he doing?"

Doktor eyed the screens for a moment. "It seems relatively stable at the moment. I don't guarantee anything yet though."

Rose spent the rest of the morning with pacing around the trailer and sitting next to her husband, managed to eat something around noon and watched Kevin and Sunny play cards with John. The boy hadn't asked to see his father again. Rose briefly wondered why, but she assumed Kevin had his share in that. The man had been in the trailer for a few minutes earlier and Rose was sure he would burst into tears when he rushed out again as if something was chasing him.

She was glad that Jack had friends like them. They really cared about him. Rose briefly wondered if it was always like this. People either liked him a lot or they hated him so much they wanted to use him, even kill him at times. What had he ever done to them?

Around six in the evening a helicopter landed not far from the trailers. Rose briefly wondered what they were doing, but started to understand when they unloaded a gigantic box. It needed at least four of the guards to transport it over to the trailer Jack was in. she watched in bemusement when they brought the box into the trailer and were shooed outside by Doktor not much later.

Boris walked up to Rose when she had settled down next to John who was telling her about some Comic Kevin had lent him.

"Rosemary? Can I have word with you?"

Rose stood, nodded. "Of course."

The man gently put a hand on her back and led her away from the others. He stopped next to a tree, out of earshot of the others. "Doktor told me that his body is destroyed beyond repair."

Rose sighed. "It seems like that, yes."

"I have spoken to the team and everyone agreed on something."

The woman frowned, confused now. What was the man getting at?

"We are aware of your financial situation, and the team has decided that Raiden should not be without a body that belongs to him. That is why everyone is going to help with the payment."

Rose blinked at Boris in disbelief. "E-excuse me, what?"

"Maverick will pay for the new civilian body." Boris explained.

The woman was sure she had gotten pale then. This was too much to ask for. She was surprised, glad, but also taken aback. The payment for a new body was no joke. It had spiraled them down deep into debt and they had only recently gotten out of it. Ignoring all the maintenance costs and other expenses.

"I..." Rose began, not sure what to say. "T-Thank you..."

Boris laughed heartily. "No need to worry. Everyone has agreed on this."

Rose felt tears sting in her eyes. She couldn't wait to tell Jack about that, but when she was half way at the trailer, she began to wonder. Was he conscious? Was he alright? Doktor was probably still working on having him switch bodies. He had explained that it would be a little more complicated in the current state.

John waved her over before she was even close to the trailer. He boy was sitting on a few blankets in the ground, Kevin and Sunny next to him again.

"Kevin said he wants to visit us when everything is okay again." The boy grinned.

"That's nice of him." Rose smiled. "Why don't we invite all of dad's friends? It's the least we could do for them for helping us out."

"Yup!" John agreed. "I'll tell Courtney and Boris!"

Rose nodded and headed to the trailer.  It was brightly illuminated now, Doktor looked over to her when she closed the door. A clicking noise could be heard, then something that sounded as if machines had started.

"I have almost finished!" Doktor smiled in some sort of strange excitement only scientists would understand. Rose never got what made them so excited about prodding around other people's body parts, no matter if they were organic or not.

Rose came closer to inspect her husband. The combat body was as black and spiky as she remembered it, but it was a body. It didn't change the fact that Jack was still unconscious. Doktor was wearing gloves, carefully readjusted the dislocated jaw and apparently connected the head to the body. A shiver raced down Rose's spine. This was all that was still left of the man she had met over a decade ago. Just a head.

Another clicking sound, a faint twitch that seemed to run through the body and Rose watched in horror when the numbers on the screens went haywire. Doktor however, didn't seem too concerned by it.

"It takes some time for everything to stabilize again. Under normal circumstance it would not take more than a few minutes, but those are hardly normal circumstances."

The woman had to agree on that when she sat down on the chair and took the clawed hand of her husband. She didn't care. It was a hand and she could hold it now. She rested the other hand on his forehead, gently ran her thumb across it when she let her head sink into the shoulder, careful not to get too close to the spikes.

The numbers returned to a normal state a few minutes after that and Doktor left them alone as he left the trailer. Rose assumed he needed to take care of basic needs. A few more minutes passed in silence, then the clawed hand gently grabbed hers.

Rose looked up, couldn't see any reaction, but the hand was definitely hold hers. It felt cold, hard, full of metal. She couldn't say his civilian body was any more human than this, but the artificial skin gave the impression that it was. It was just an exoskeleton in the end. A mock up of a human person, but it wouldn't get any better than that. Rose couldn't say that she had ever gotten this close to the combat body. She had seen it once in an e-mail jack at sent her.

 _'Look at this beauty!'_ he had written next a picture of it and all the data as if he was describing a new car. He had been so proud of it, so amazed and he had told her about all the things it could do. She had been happy for him. The body was just a tool, something he had to use to be able to live. She was so happy that he was happy.

Doktor had returned then, placed a cup of coffee on the table next to all the laptops. He typed something, muttered to himself, typed more and sipped his coffee.

"Given the circumstances, everything has returned to a more or less normal state." The man eventually said. "I assume that he will regain consciousness soon. The body is in peak condition, however, we usually switch him when he his conscious, so he might be confused." Doktor explained.

Rose just nodded, continued to run her thumb over Jack's forehead. "Can... I do anything?" she asked silently.

"I think it is best to stay with him." Doktor shrugged.

The woman nodded slowly, had no intention of leaving anyway.

The sun had set again when Rose began to doze off. Her head had begun to hurt again, Doktor had changed the bandage earlier, told her that it looked pretty well. She didn't care. The door to the trailer opened and Kevin entered, carrying John. The boy was wrapped in a blanket, went pale when he saw his father.

Doktor put his index finger to his lips and nodded over to Rose as he pulled a blanket over her shoulders. John nodded, understanding. He couldn't stand staying outside any longer. It had been hard to stop asking to see his father. He couldn't wait any longer, wanted to confirm that the man really was doing better.

"How's he doing?" Kevin asked silently.

"Stable." Doktor muttered. "Unconscious still."

Kevin came closer, sat down on a second chair, John on his lap. The boy instantly reached out to his father, grabbed the hand, mindful of the machines still monitoring the man's condition. The hand reacted to the touch, slowly closed around the tiny fingers that held it, but there was no other reaction.

"Dad... it's me." John whispered. "Are you alright?"

John didn't get a reply. The boy whimpered silently.

"Lets come back later, hm?" Kevin suggested. He couldn't take it. Had seen Raiden before, was close to tears then.

"Okay..." John muttered, kisses his father's cheek and glanced back at him when Kevin carried him out of the trailer again.

Doktor absentmindedly ran a hand through the blond hair, lost in thoughts for a short moment before he returned to his work. He had to finish this report, although he was sure Boris would accept it if it was a day late. His work was never late. A joke if he couldn't finish a simple report in time.

It was well past midnight when Rose woke to a soft voice.

"...Rose..." The voice was weak, slow and silent. Rose lifted her head then, confused for a moment.

"I'm here." She whispered, relief washing over her so suddenly that she was crying again. "How are you feeling?"  She was sure he was exhausted. Fuel cells could only do so much against emotional exhaustion.

He scoffed weakly but didn't reply. "How's John?" his words had a slight slur to it, were silent.

"He's doing pretty well." Rose told him. She wanted to know what happened, but couldn't bring herself to ask. Not now. This wasn't the right time.

Raiden nodded slightly, carefully opened his eyes. He was a out of it, needed a long moment to grasp that his body had switched.

"What happened...-" he began, groaned and ran a hand over his face, flinched at the cold metal. "Something hit me..." he eyed the clawed hand for a moment, moved it around and let it sink down again.

Rose swallowed and held his hand tighter. "It's okay now... It's all good." Tears filled her eyes, relief almost overwhelmed her. He was alright. John was alright too. It was okay.

"Your head..." Raiden muttered, reached out to the bandage. "They attacked you..."

"It's okay. It's going to heal, there won't be any permanent damage." Rose explained.

Raiden slowly struggled to sit up, felt slightly dizzy when he did so. The body felt heavy and he needed a lot of effort to move it.

Doktor came over to them. "Ah, Raiden. It is good to see you awake."

The cyborg only nodded, still not fully grasping the situation. He got hit, that was all he remembered. Now he was here, in the combat body and his head felt like it had been smashed into a wall.

"Everything will be fine." Doktor smiled. "It looked bad for a while, but you pulled through."

Raiden nodded again. "I'm not having some sort of bad dream... right?"

"Nein, nein." Doktor said. "All of this is really happening. You should rest, though. There is plenty of time."

Raiden only nodded, frowned at all the machines and cables he then saw, the tubes and electrodes that stuck to him and the obnoxious noise he hated. A single glance at all the machinery told him how bad it had been.

"Where's my body...?"

"Nun..." Doktor muttered, adjusted his glasses. "There is no salvaging it. It is destroyed beyond repair."

The beeping noise sped up for a moment. More bills.

"It's okay Jack." Rose muttered then.

Raiden sighed. He could worry about that later.  "Get me off of this stuff..." he grumbled into Doktor's direction and pulled at the cords.

"Just a moment." The man sighed and flicked the machinery off after he made sure that the body was working the way it was supposed to. It took a while to remove all of the cords and tubes.

"Do not move around too much." Doktor warned. "Your body might be in top condition, but your head is not I am afraid. "

"I'm fine." Raiden muttered. The headache could be ignored and the dizziness wasn't that bad. At least that was what he thought until he actually got his legs on the ground and tried to stand. He fell backwards right away and Rose jumped up to keep him from falling over.

"God you're so stubborn!" Rose hissed, slightly annoyed. "Rest! You need it!"

"I'm fine." Raiden repeated, demonstrated it as he stood again, this time without losing balance. He wasn't looking fine though, Rose thought. Dark circles under his eyes, face incredibly pale. He slowly made his way around to Rose, steps clumsy and uneven.

"Jack..." Rose muttered when she went over to him and wrapped her arms around him. He was a bit taller now, Rose needed to tiptoe to get close enough to kiss his cheek.

"Where's John?"

Rose sighed deeply. He wouldn't stop to get any rest until he had seen the boy, she thought. Maybe it reassured her to see him up and about. He was nowhere near as fine as he pretended to be, but he would recover.

She opened up the door, Raiden used the wall to steady himself and walk over to her. Rose could see Doktor shaking his head with an amused smile.

Sunny had been running from Hal's car back to John to get Wolf, when she noticed the open trailer door. She stopped short, frowned at Rose. The woman was smiling held her hand out to someone and slowly made her way backwards down the two steps that led inside of the trailer. The girl squealed in excitement when she recognized the man that was slowly making his way out of the trailer, using Rose's shoulder and the trailer wall as support. Rose had adjusted her position, grabbed his arm as he stumbled.

She scolded him. Sunny didn't hear her words when she ran over to them. "Raiden!"

The blond man smiled weakly at her, tried to adjust his position so he wasn't leaning on Rose, but fell backwards and bumped against the trailer. Rose glared at him but he ignored her.

"Hey, Sunny."

Sunny carefully sat the Notebook on the table and hugged the tall man. Her tears rolled over the black armor, vanished in the sandy ground below. She squeaked in surprise when he picked her up and hugged her tightly. He hadn't picked her up in years.

"Thank you, Sunny." He whispered.

"But I haven't done anything...?"

"For just being the awesome girl you've always been." He grinned at her, ruffled her hair and sat her back down.

The girl was blushing now, tried to rearrange her hair in an acceptable way. "Jerk." She muttered a smirk.

Raiden then looked around, seemed to notice for the first time that the trailers had Maverick's insignia on them and was slightly surprised. Slowly he made his way over to the second one, Rose trailing next to him prepared to act as some sort of wall should he lose balance again. She really didn't want him to run around like this, but there was no way to keep him confined in  that trailer. She knew he hated to be forced to rest. He was always doing something.

Kevin sneaked up on them from behind, grabbed Raiden's arm when he was about to stumble into rose and  steadied him. "Yo, Buddy, you shouldn't move around like that."

"Nice to see you too, Kev." Raiden replied, not as surprised as he thought he should have been. They were friends. Of course the man would have tried to come here sooner or later. Wherever they were. It seemed to still be in New Zealand.

"I'm serious, man. You might damage the cars if you fall onto them."

Rose lifted an eyebrow, not sure if Kevin was making fun, or if he was really worried about the cars.

Raiden scoffed, stumbled once more and Kevin pulled him closer. "Stubborn jerk." He hissed, dragged the man over to the second Trailer and opened the door. Raiden barely made it inside before his legs gave out and he was sitting on the ground, slightly confused as to how he had gotten there.

"You're in no condition to walk around like that." Kevin scolded him.

"I just... wanted to see John..."

"I know, Buddy." Kevin sighed and crouched down in front of the Cyborg as he place s hands onto his shoulders, avoiding the spikes.

"Boris took him to the hospital to get his foot treated. He finally agreed on being taken there after he saw you. Looks pretty bad, but I'm sure it'll heal."

Raiden nodded, slumped forward as he lost consciousness. Kevin sighed, glanced at Rose who darted over to Doktor's trailer.

"Stubborn Jerk." Kevin repeated.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done.
> 
> I really, really apologize for the lack of decent fighting scenes... I have this habit of avoiding them whenever I can. |D There's lots of random fluff in here, I hope the ending isn't too disappointing. 
> 
> I could have never imagined to get this much recognition. This was a very pleasant surprise for me, and i really loved to read every single comment. I got so happy at them and it made it so much easier to continue the fic. 
> 
> THANK YOU, guys. I can't say that often enough. You rock!

He woke with a start, sat up, sent rose slipping to the ground as he did so. Out of a reflex he grabbed her shirt to prevent her from hitting the ground and woke her in the process. She sat up, looked around in confusion for a moment, then yawned and blinked at him tiredly. He realized he had been lying on some sort of couch, Rose must have been close if she fell down like that.

"Jack...?" She asked silently, still confused from the sudden disturbance.

He slowly let go of her shirt, as confused as she was. Where was he? There was an oil lamp on a makeshift table, a small stack of paper not far away from it. A pen had been placed on top of it. Then there was a laptop, a small red-translucent box connected to it. Sunny had been here it seemed. He had seen that laptop earlier. It was tiny compared to the one she usually used.

Kevin walked in, sipping coffee from a mug, and turned to look at the confused pair. "Yo, Buddy. You woke up." The man stated with a wide grin. "Had enough beauty sleep?"

Raiden was too dazed to catch the joke and just frowned at the man.  How did he get here?

"Jack?" Rose asked again, waving a hand in front of his face. "Are you there?"

The cyborg blinked, nodded slowly as he tore his eyes away from Kevin. "Where... what happened...?"

"You passed out." Kevin answered. "We moved you to the couch, Dok said you're fine, so we just let you sleep."

"Dok...?" his mind was fuzzy. It was still night, raining heavily. He could hear the raindrops hitting the metal roof of the trailer. It was a nice monotone and calming sound.

"Jack are you sure you're okay?" Rose then asked with slight concern in her voice.

He ran a hand through his hair. "Just... confused. Why are you here, Kev...?"

Kevin lifted an eyebrow, sat the mug down on the table and walked over to his friend. "Hey when you asked me to research that one guy I somehow knew something was up, so when Sunny contacted us that you're missing, Boris immediately dispatched a team over here. Took the chance to visit New Zealand." He smirked.

"Boris is here too?"

Kevin nodded. "Courtney as well. And a few guards... Buddy, what the hell happened...?" the face of the younger male fell and turned into a concerned frown.

"I... got hit by something..." Raiden replied. That was all he remembered. He got hit, he smashed into something and then everything was dark. The whole time he had thought Rose was with him, was speaking to him. John had been there too. Had that been a dream? But Rose was sitting next to him now.

"Yeah, that was pretty obvious." Kevin sighed. "Look, if not for John we wouldn't have found you at all."

"John..." he had been there, hadn't he? He recalled that he had escaped with John.

"Should have seen the boy. Charged at us with Rocks, yelled that he'll beat us up if we get closer to you. Took Boris a lot of talking to get the boy to understand that we were trying to help."

Raiden was more confused now."But John knows Boris..."

"It was dark, it rained, and we had flashlights. You know the big bright blinding kind of flashlight. I'd shit my pants if I had just escaped from a flaming building and people were after me like that." Kevin shrugged. "He was just scared, and tried to protect you. Though it did more harm than good."

"What?"

Rose turned away at that and stood to leave them alone to talk. Raiden was confused, slightly irritated now.

"Look, if we had found you just a few minutes later, you wouldn't be here now. Dok didn't even know if he could save you at all."

The cyborg held his breath for a second.

"It's all good now." Kevin reassured. But Raiden was far from calm.

That definitely meant that the other body was destroyed. The way Rose looked at him, suggested that she had been terrified of losing him. She hadn't looked at him like this in a long time.

"Where's John...?"

"Sleeping." Rose said silently. "He was exhausted when Boris brought him back, fell asleep in the car."

Raiden nodded to himself, glad the boy was alright.

"You should get some more rest too, buddy." Kevin sighed. "Dok did say you're pretty much fine, but your head got a pretty bad bump. Take it easy, okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Like hell you are." Kevin argued. "You almost died, buddy. There's no way you can be 'fine'."

"I'm fine." Raiden repeated, more firm this time.

"Jack..." Rose then sighed, walked back over to the two and sat down next to her husband. He was so broad and tall now, she almost felt like she was sitting next to a different person. There was the slight scent of metal clinging to him, maybe some oil too. He was cold to the touch, clunky and didn't seem human at all. She tricked herself into thinking it was just a suit and not his actual body at the moment. That the broad shoulders and the chest were just the suit. He wasn't this broad when he was home. He had never been this broad. Even the civilian body was a little more built than his actual human body had been the last time Rose had seen it. She had always assumed it was that way to make space for the necessary devices. Not that it bothered her.

She couldn't get used to the combat body though. Especially that height. And the heels. How did he manage to look so good in heels? Novelty, she assumed. It was new to her. Like when he chose to water the plants in the front yard in broad daylight. That was new too. 

"You need to rest." She eventually said. "Doktor told you to take it easy as well."

"I am resting right now." He sighed.

"Sleep."

He gave her a bemused glare. Sleep was possible in this body, but he didn't want to. On top of that he wasn't tired. He was about to backtalk when Courtney entered the trailer, shaking the umbrella she was holding and shut the door once she was inside, leaning the object against the wall on a stack of newspaper that seemed to had been placed there for this purpose.

"Hey, Raiden." Courtney greeted him with a smile and a wave. "How're you feeling?"

He had no answer. Better? He couldn't quite recall how he had felt a few hours ago. It was just a hazy blur of words, some movement, pain and darkness. The pain was gone. Maybe that was an improvement?

"I'm good."

Courtney didn't seem convinced, but she left it at that. "Boris said you want to go home, huh?"

Rose nodded. "Doktor said we could, and John really needs a fresh set of clothing too."

"Is Boris okay with me taking this body home? I'm off work." Raiden asked.

Kevin nodded quickly. "It's not like you have any other to go to at the moment. Boris said it's fine until you get a new one."

Raiden snorted. That wasn't going to happen anytime soon. He couldn't say if he liked that Idea of being him in the combat body. The neighbors would only stare more. Way more. Another reason to not head outside and maybe avoid the windows too now.

"What about that guy who attacked us?" He eventually asked to change the topic.

"Fled. Boris dispatched a team to chase them down. They're going to jail."

"For kidnapping a child?"

"Yes... and for damaging company property..." Courtney mumbled as she looked away. "Attempted murder on a civilian, illegal weapon possession and so on."

Raiden lifted an eyebrow. "Attempted murder on who? He didn't touch John."

"You, Raiden. You. I know, I know" Courtney held up her hands. "Military cyborgs don't get the same treatment as mere humans, but," She paused at that, took a deep breath. "You were off work. You were a mere civilian. Cyborg or not, you didn't count as a military cyborg in that."

"Surprising..." The man muttered cynically. "So we can just go home, pretend it never happened and see what the news tell us?"

"Jack..." Rose sighed. "We need to talk this through with John. He has seen things children are not supposed to see-"

"I didn't kill anyone!" Raiden suddenly snapped at her.

"Jack, That's not what I meant." Rose replied calmly. "He saw you lying there, in nothing but half a torso with a head. He was so scared of you dying that he even attacked Boris! John was in panic, and now he's dealing with it, in his own way. He tries to forget about it."

Raiden fell silent then.

"Children aren't supposed to see things like that... no one is."

The cyborg looked away, feeling guilty now. "I couldn't avoid that missile..." He eventually admitted. "It was homing in on me... I threw John to the ground, Rose..."

"And saved his life with it. It was the only choice you had, Jack."

He nodded slowly. It had saved the boy, but he still wasn't happy with the outcome. He also would have preferred to go after this man personally. There was no way Rose would just let him go do that now though. She was expecting him to be there, everyone else was doing that too. He was off work and he wouldn't even get paid for chasing that man down anyway. That man wouldn't hesitate to destroy this body too.

Kevin fumbled around with his car keys, held them up. "I'll drive you home."

"Wait." Raiden interrupted. "The car I rented... it's still at the hotel, I need to give it back."

"Courtney took care of that." Rose said. "It's all good."

"Go get your things." Kevin said. "I wait in the car."

Rose stood, not without kissing her husband's cheek. "I'll get John. Boris wanted to talk to you."

Raiden nodded, stood slowly. Boris smirked when he came over to him. The man was standing under a tent next to an oil lamp and a laptop   "I need to talk with you, Raiden." His smirk turned into a frown so fast that Raiden wasn't sure anymore if it had been a good idea when he entered the tent-like structure.

 "Look Boris, if this is about what happened... I can expl-"

Boris held up a hand to silence him. "I want you to listen." The shorter man shook his head. His face looked so firm, Raiden really wasn't sure about this anymore. He stared at the man like a scolded child, the height didn't change that at all.

"Now, now. Do not look at me like that." Boris sighed, placed a hand on Raiden's arm. "This is important."

"What is this about? You're going to fire me? I need to clean up HQ for the rest of my life? You found the stack of family pictures and candy for John I keep in my locker...?"

"Listen." Boris voice was firm, didn't allow any more back talk. "You need time off."

Raiden got pale. Boris was going to fire him, wasn't he? Where was he supposed to get money from then? And the body... He couldn't keep it if he was fired. There was no way he could pay for that. And then he'd be just a head, depending on machines... the costs for that. It was better to just die then. He hung his shoulders. They would want the bills paid for this too. The trailers, the transport of the body. Why had he gotten hit by that missile...

"I have told Rosemary already."

He'd be jobless then. Again. Without a body this time. And he'd just wither away with nothing to do against it.

"Maverick will pay for a new civilian Body."

And then Rose would have to work overtime- _Wait, what?_ Raiden frowned, not sure if he had heard correctly.

"Wha-?"

Boris grinned. "Maverick will pay for the new body." He repeated.

"You're kidding..." Raiden stared at the man in disbelief. That couldn't be true.

The shorter man shook his head. "This is serious."

Raiden couldn't believe it. He was torn between being overwhelmingly happy and feeling incredibly guilty. He hadn't deserved that, it had been his own fault that the body had gotten destroyed.

"Also." Boris continued. "A vacation."

"I'm already off work-"

"One month. Paid."

Raiden then finally thought he was dreaming. This was too good to be true. "Boris... I can't accep-"

"It has all been arranged already." The man grinned. "You cannot back out of it."

"You're talking about huge amounts of money, Boris." Raiden groaned, gestured wildly, tried to make Boris understand. "I can't believe this..." He ran a hand through his hair, shook his head. He wanted to cry. He didn't deserve this at all. Would he even manage it to be off work for so long?

"Where's the catch?"

"No catch, tovarich."  Boris patted his back.

"Why...?" was all Raiden managed. Why was Boris doing this? He started to think that being fired would be less stressing. He felt so guilty for this. Why did they even feel the need to do this?

Boris turned, eyes sad. "We owe you a lot. Those children do too. It is the least we can do to make your life a little more normal."

Raiden shook his head in some sort of daze. This was a dream, he told himself. A good one, but still a dream. Once he woke up everything would be normal again. Where would he wake up? Was he still trapped in that building with John?

"Raiden?" Boris asked when the man didn't say anything, eyes sort of looking through him.

"Sorry... Just..." The cyborg shook his head. "I don't believe it..."

Boris smiled at him. "They're waiting, are they not? Give me call once you have understood."

Raiden only nodded, turned around and slowly headed for the car. He didn't care about the rain, ignored his hair as it began to stick to his forehead in wet streaks, it felt unreal. Far away.

 _'Get a grip, Kid.'_ He heard Snake's voice in his head. _'Isn't that what you wanted? Some peaceful time with your family?'_

The cyborg nodded slightly and remembered the last conversation he had had with Snake. It had been so long ago, so painfully long. He wished he would have been able to see that man one last time. On a phone too, Raiden had been out on a mission, there was no way he could have managed to get there in time. But these words, no matter how meaningless to an outsider, were something he would never forget.

_'Kid, John is proof that you're doing things right. By the way, did Rose know that your 'grandfather' had the same name?'_

And they had shared a short laugh. Raiden hadn't known at the time that it would be the last time he'd ever hear him speak. He had taken the random calls for granted, even got annoyed at them sometimes, but he always picked up, listened to what Snake would tell him. Mostly it was nonsense, some words of wisdom thrown in here and there. Only after they didn't come anymore he started to find them meaningful.

"Jack?"

He flinched, took a step backwards. Rose stood in front of him, holding an umbrella over them. "What's wrong?"

"Later..." he muttered and walked over to the car. John was strapped into the car-seat, soundly asleep, a bright green cast on his broken ankle, tiny crutches on the floor. He was clutching a toy sword and a plush animal. It seemed to be a wolf.

Raiden opened the passenger's side door, sat down slowly. Kevin gave him a half glare and sighed. "You're making everything wet."

"Isn't your car, is it?"

"Nope. Company car." Kevin replied.

"They're used to worse."

Kevin snorted silently. "True."

He started the engine when Rose was sitting behind him and shut her door. "You're going to be okay?" Kevin asked Raiden. "Boris told you about it now, right?"

"You knew?"

"He's been planning that for months! You have any idea how hard to was to keep my mouth shut, Buddy? I would have died to see your face when he told you!"

Rose leaned forward. "What did he say?"

"Paid Vacation..." Raiden muttered silently. "And... a new body..." he still couldn't believe it.

Rose smiled. "Yeah he told me about that."

"I don't think he knows how expensive this is..."

Kevin drove off the place they had stayed at and turned left at the main street. "Dok filled him in on that. You know what Boris said?" the younger man asked with a grin.

"No."

" _'This guy is insane.'_ "

"Who? Dok?"

Kevin shook his head. "You, buddy. You're handling all the maintenance costs and repairs on your own."

Raiden sighed. "Rose helps..."

"Still! How do you do that?"

"You get used to it... after a while." Raiden muttered. He didn't want to talk about it. Maverick was more than moderate when it came to payment. He couldn't complain. It was barely enough, but they managed.

"It used to be much worse than it is now." Rose continued for him.

Raiden stayed silent, tuned out the conversation between Kevin and Rose. Eventually the landscape started to look familiar and soon their house came in sight. It was still standing. The front door was not broken open, the windows intact. Seemed like no one had tried to break in.

"Thanks Kev." Raiden muttered when he removed the seatbelt and got out of the car. "call me when anything turns up."

"Sure." The man replied, waited until Raiden had carefully plucked John from the back seat and silently carried him to the front door.

Rose followed him, the crutches in her hand, watched him as he unlocked the door and turned on the lights in the hallway. The white tiles looked so different to her, so much more white and new. The dirt stains Raiden left there, only made her smile. Home. They were home, and everything suddenly seemed a lot less bad than it had been.

"You take him to his room..." Raiden muttered when he noticed the dirt in the hallway. "I can't really take the feet off..." he sighed.

Rose smiled at him, gently took John into her arms after she had taken off her shoes and headed upstairs. Those still weren't Rose's shoes, Raiden realized. Would Hal even miss them? He cleaned up the hallway, feeling oddly embarrassed at himself. In combat it didn't matter, but here, he needed to look out not to bump into anything. It would break, get scratched, bent, things like that. With a sigh he slowly made his way upstairs, thankful for the concrete steps. They were silent and the carpet swallowed most noise too.

Slowly, mindful of the Lego still lying around on the first floor he made his way over to the left and silently peeked into the dimly lit room. John's room hadn't changed much. A few more drawings on the walls, of creatures he didn't know, of people, of their family. The lamp on the nightstand with dragons and knights bathed the room in a soft and warm light. Rose gently kissed John's hair and pulled the blanket over his shoulders before she stood and silently left the room.

She smiled at her husband at the door. "We should go to bed too." She whispered.

He only nodded, knowing he wouldn't get any rest. "I'll take the couch." He insisted when she was about to pull him into the bedroom.

"Let me take the couch with you then." She grinned and slowly made her way downstairs.

When he joined her in the living room she had lit a scented candle on top of the movie drawer. It faintly smelled of lavender, gave off a calm and reassuring light in the milky glass it was housed in. Rose silently opened the movie drawer and dug around in the darkness.

"What are you looking for?" Raiden asked silently when he came closer.

"Something we haven't watched in years- Aha!" Rose pulled two DVD cases out of the drawer. "Original or remake?" She asked as she hid the cases behind her back before he could see them.

"I thought you wanted to sleep." Raiden told her with the faint hint of a smile. He didn't mind a movie night now. Forget what happened, even if it was just a few hours.

"Original or remake?" Rose asked again, a smirk spreading over her features.

He tried to peek past her but she managed to keep the cases hidden from his view. He sighed in defeat, but began to have an idea what movie she was hiding.

"How old is that original?"

"About 1930's" Rose immediately answered.

"And the male lead is called Jack?" Raiden asked, already knowing what movie she was hiding. 

Rose laughed and showed him the cases. "The remake is nice... but the original is more fun." She admitted when she closed the drawer with a swing of her hip and turned around to the DVD player.

Raiden didn't know what sparked the weird feelings inside him now, he couldn't get his eyes off of her. The way she moved, the way she put the hair behind her ear when she lowered herself to find the right buttons in the darkness. How she opened that DVD case. He frowned at his own thoughts. He hadn't had those in years. He loved her, but finding her attractive in that sense had been something he thought he wouldn't be able to feel anymore. He lacked the certain body parts for it anyway.

The moment was gone as fast as it came when he realized that, replaced by a strange feel of emptiness. What was left of him?

 With a sigh he carefully sat down on the couch, hoping it wouldn't break under his weight. This body wasn't much heavier than the other, but that didn't mean it was light.

Rose sat down next to him when she had turned on the TV and located the remote under a stack of magazines. Raiden was impressed at how Rose managed to keep the house mostly clean of stray objects that seemed to collect themselves at every corner. Back in New York he had always come home to a huge mess, pretty similar to the one in his mind back then.

Rose grabbed a blanket and put it on his armored legs before she placed her head on it and navigated through the main menu.

"Is this really alright?" he asked silently.

"I don't see a problem with it." Rose shrugged. "Sure, it's cold and clunky, but I don't mind."

He lifted an eyebrow when the movie started. "It's not made for things like these... I don't want to hurt you..."

She grabbed his hand and held it when she put the remote next to her. "Jack..." She muttered when she turned on her back to look at him. Slowly she reached out to him and pulled him close, listened to the armored chest  silently click and shift as she did so. He wasn't sure what she was doing until it was too late and her lips had met his.

He looked at her for a long moment, surprised at the sudden kiss. It didn't feel like it should, but this was as good as it would get. She usually kissed his cheeks, knew he hated the lack of proper sensation in the artificial parts. It had improved a lot over the years, maybe someday it would almost be normal again, but who knew when that would happen. He had gotten used to it, was fine with it. Unless Rose did what she just had. Then he was aware of it again. Two different sensations at the same time, one so real that it almost overwhelmed him and the other distant, dull. Even worse now with the Combat body as it lacked even more in the sensation aspect.

He pulled away, a deep frown in his face. Rose then realized her mistake and grimaced. "I'm sorry..." She apologized silently, gently ran a hand over his cheek.

He sighed, eyes wandering to the movie. Why had he thought he could forget about anything with this movie running? They sat in silence until the movie ended, Raiden only realizing that Rose had fallen asleep when he grabbed the remote to turn the TV off. Carefully he lifted her off of him and placed her on the couch as he went to blow the candle out and picked her up to carry her into the bedroom.

He had just left the bedroom again, silently shut the door when he heard soft sniffling coming from John's room. Immediately he made his way over to the boy's room, slowly but not bothering to be silent as he didn't want to startle the boy.

"John?" he asked silently when he peeked into the room.

The boy was sitting in his bed, blond hair tousled, tears running down his face as he tried to wipe them away.

"Dad..." the boy sniffed.

Raiden entered the room and sat on the bed of the boy. "What's wrong?"

"Nightmare..." the boy grumbled.

Raiden's eyes wandered to the ground before they met his son again. "You know what helps me when I have nightmares?"

"No...?"

Raiden gently picked the boy up with his blanket and held him tightly in his arms.

"Hugging mommy?" John asked. It was no secret that his father had quite bad nightmares at times. John had heard him scream often enough to get an idea at how bad they were.

"Mhm."

"You're cold..." the boy complained and pulled the blanket higher as he leaned against his father's chest.

"Sorry..."

"'S okay..." John mumbled as he drifted back into sleep, holding on to his father.

Raiden wrapped his arms around the boy and held him, watched him sleeping so peacefully even after a nightmare. Kids, he thought. Kids were like that. The nightmares wouldn't come back. When he pulled the blanket over the boys feet, he noticed someone had written something on his cast. Boris had signed it like he signed the reports. The cyborg had to smile at that. In John's class the kids probably would sign too. He located a marker on the nightstand next to a half finished drawing of what appeared to be a black dog. Wolf maybe. Rose peeked into the room just when he had finished scrawling on the cast. It was so difficult to handle a pen with these hands, but he managed and he knew John had something to show off to his classmates when he went back to school on Monday.

"Jack?" Rose asked silently when the first sunbeams crawled through the windows.

"Nightmares" he whispered back.

"You or John?"

Raiden nodded to the boy when he carefully placed the boy back in his bed after he had replaced the marker at his place.  He pulled the blanket over the boy, gently ran a hand through the hair. He knew it was soft, but the sensation was so off that he used his face instead to feel the soft locks of the boy.

"I prepared breakfast." Rose whispered. "If you want anything."

"I'm good." Raiden slowly stood, looked back at his sleeping son and silently left the room, only to step on the Lego john had left in the hallway. He took a deep breath, once more surprised that the bricks were able to hold out against his weight, shoved them aside and followed Rose downstairs.

He sat down at the dining table with her, watched as she made her way through a bun with marmalade, while her eyes kept wandering from the newspaper to him and back.

"This is almost too peaceful..." He muttered when Rose gathered the plate and knife to carry it over to the sink.

"What do you mean?"

"Knowing no one would call me, and still getting paid... this is..." he shook his head. "Strange."

"You deserved it more than anyone else at that place." Rose huffed.

"I'm not the only one who's working hard..." He replied when he stood and made his way over to her when she began to wash the plate. They had never bothered to buy a dishwasher. Raiden couldn't see a point in it, and dishwashing itself made Rose open for sudden hugs. He didn't know why he couldn't keep his hands off of her, he wanted to touch her, feel her. Knew it would never be the same again, and he still desperately longed for it. He shook his head when he wrapped his arms around his wife and rested his forehead on her shoulder.

"I'll go see how the others are doing later." Rose then said when she  fished for the towel, trying to grasp it without moving from her position. Once she had it, she began to dry the plate. "The missiles have ruined quite a chunk of the neighborhood... Oh but Tyler is awake and at Home again, I spoke to Dan yesterday."

"That's good." Raiden muttered, absorbed in the feeling of her knitted pullover against his skin. It was so soft, like her hair. And she had put that perfume one she rarely used because the bottle was almost empty and she couldn't find a new one anywhere.

Had she done it for him? Because she knew he liked that scent?

"Moooom?" John whined from the hallway in the first floor. "It's scary to get down there..."

The couple separated and both went into the hallway. John was sitting on the first step, crutches in one hand, face scrunched up. Raiden made a move to get the boy, but Rose held him back. She showed him how to get down easier and after a minute of persuading the boy opted for the toddler method of just crawling down.

The boy's face was red in embarrassment, but he had managed it anyway, angrily taking the crutches from his mother. He had mastered that in less than a few hours at least. It wasn't until the boy had finished breakfast and was sitting in the living room to play a video game, the he realized a second person has signed on the bright green cast.

The boy turned his leg to get a better view, frowned at the all capital child-like scrawling. "Cy....Cyborg..." he turned his leg again so see the rest of the writing. "Ninja." The boy let his foot sink to the cushion again, leaned against the sofa with a frown.

"Daaaaad, did you sign my cast with 'Cyborg Ninja'?" The boy yelled into the kitchen.

Rose turned to look at her husband who was trying to hide am impish grin. "You did?" she asked with a chuckle.

"I did." He said louder so John could hear him.

"Why didn't you sign it with your real name?" John asked.

"'Jack Sears' sounds boring, doesn't it?"

"But then they all know you're my dad!"

Raiden sighed and walked into the living room, bumped into the doorframe and left a chip in the wood. He flinched, looked back at Rose who sighed and mouthed _'look out'._

"Tyler still thinks you're a nutcase because mom threw all the china at you and you caught all of it. He saw it when he wanted to pick me up to play."

"Nutcase, huh?"

John nodded. "And Betsy doesn't believe that you actually exist. And then there's that troublemaker who always says he wants to fight you when you show up someday."

"Oh? What's his name?"

John whined in annoyance. "Jack."

Raiden scoffed. "I wonder if he still says that when he sees me."

The boy tilted his head. "Does that mean you're going to take me to school?!" he almost stumbled over his words, eyes wide in excitement.

Raiden laughed nervously. "... Maybe. I'm not promising anything..."

"Okay!" John squealed, grabbed the second controller for the game he was playing and put it in his father's hands.

"You get to be player 1 today."

"What an honor." Raiden smirked and got a punch to his side from the boy.

John grimaced and shook his hand. "Ow..." He complained.

"Don't hit me." Raiden sighed.

"Okay, okay..." John sighed and  looked at his father for a while. "Say, dad... aren't you actually naked?... I mean this is your body.... and usually you're wearing clothing."

"Daddy has nothing to hide." Rose smirked from the doorframe.

Both Raiden and John looked at her with the exact same deadpanned expression.

"I didn't mean it like _that_..." Rose sighed and rolled her eyes.

Raiden leaned against the couch and sighed once more. "Clothing would only make it more difficult to move around." He eventually explained. "There's probably nothing that actually fits me right now anyway."

"I'll go look for something." Rose offered and headed upstairs.

John looked at his father for a few more moments before he started the game. It was interrupted when the doorbell rang.

"Jack, can you open up?" Rose yelled from the bedroom.

He was about to argue, but realized John was in no condition to actually open the door right now and slowly got up. He took a deep breath when he headed to the front door, already thousands of scenarios inside his head on how this could go horrible wrong.

Slowly he opened the door, only to find a brown haired boy standing there. He had his arm in a cast, face full of band-aids, but looked fine otherwise. He expected the boy to scream and run away, but he did the exact opposite.

"Woah..." the boy muttered in awe as he looked up at the tall man towering over him. "John, did you grow really big or is that actually your dad?!" the boy yelled.

John then left the living room with the crutches, grinned widely at the boy. "Tyler!"

"Wait... your dad actually **is** a cyborg?"

"I told you he is." The boy pouted.

Tyler walked in, followed John back into the living room as Raiden closed the front door in confusion.

"Well yeah you said that, but... that's so cool!"

Raiden stood in the hallway for a long time, not daring to go back to the living room. He could see Tyler trying to get a peek at him and hid away in the kitchen. That was the first time any of John's friends had ever seen him. And it had to be in the combat body. Now everyone would realize he was a military cyborg... and parents would forbid their children to play with John.

"Tyler!" John hissed. "He doesn't like when people stare at him!"

"Sorry, Mister...!" the boy yelled. "But seriously! Dad said he saw him, but he looked completely normal to him."

"Tyler..." John seemed irritated now.

"I know, I know... but can he do tricks?"

"My dad is not a robot!" John shouted angrily. "He's just as human as your dad is!"

Raiden was pressing himself at the wall in the kitchen, had knocked down a stack of paper but couldn't care less. This was what he had been afraid of. Being judged by the people that lived close by. And John's friends nonetheless.

When Rose looked into the kitchen John and Tyler were arguing loudly. Raiden was trembling violently, wanted the children to argue about anything but him.

"Jack..." Rose almost whispered, placed the clothing she had found on a chair and walked over to him to take him in her arms. "I'm sorry..."

"It's okay..." Raiden replied silently, voice cracking.  "Tyler is just... curious I guess."

"Should I throw him out?"

"No... I'll go."

"Jack, no!"

The kids immediately shut up.  

"That's all your fault!" John yelled through tears. The boy was barely holding it together. "Dad tries so hard to be like everyone else and there are always people like you who get all curious and bother him! He's human too, just because his body is a machine it doesn't make him any less human!"

John began to sob and Rose could see Tyler as he walked over to the front door. The boy was crying as well when he opened the door. Rose let go of Raiden and dashed towards the boy to stop him from leaving.

"Wait." She said quickly, worried that the boy would run into a car if he left like this.

Raiden watched as she took the boy's hand and gently pulled him back to the living room. She managed to calm both boys down, spoke to them silently and calmly, all while Raiden slowly sat down on the tiled kitchen floor, thinking about leaving. He didn't want to make it any more difficult for them.

"Mister...?" a bashful Tyler silently asked when he peeked into the Kitchen.

Raiden closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he lifted his head and looked at the boy. "I'm sorry..."

Raiden only shook his head. "It's okay... I heard worse."

"Okay..." The boy muttered and dashed out of the kitchen. Not much later he could hear the two boys laugh and giggle over the video game they were playing.

Rose came back to him, sighed. "They're both just irritated from everything that happened..."

"I know. I was just surprised..."

Rose nodded, patted the clothing she had left on the chair and turned to leave again.

"Rose, I don't think I can make it for a whole month..."

She smiled at him. "it'll be okay, Jack. I won't invite people over. And Tyler keeps his mouth shut."

"I'm sick and tired of having to hide all the time..."

Rose looked at him, her gaze full with the answer he didn't want to hear. _'You don't have to hide'_ Thankfully she didn't say it, just left the room.

A few hours later John and Tyler had moved their games to the first floor and Raiden sneaked into the living room. There wasn't much to do now. He had looked through the clothing, found a white shirt that actually fit him, but ripped at the shoulders due to the spikes. He didn't bother taking it off again, didn't care. Pants had been easier. They fit without belts now.

Rose ran a hand through his hair when she passed the couch with the laundry basket from the first floor.

Around four pm Raiden was utterly bored. Tyler had returned home, John was still playing. He had cleaned up the whole house by then, only left John's room untouched, Put the laundry out to dry vacuumed the bedroom, cleaned the bathroom, dusted off everything and was sitting on the couch again, staring at the black TV screen. He went upstairs again in search of the laptop, found it in John's room and headed to the kitchen. Rose was working on dinner, humming silently to herself while she was doing so.

He started up the laptop, didn't quite know what he wanted to do there anyway. It was a nice afternoon, remotely warm. He could try, couldn't he?

"Rose..." he muttered silently when he shut the laptop again. "Want to take a walk...?"

Rose turned, surprise written all over her face. "Well I needed to go to the grocery store... I forgot to buy bread. You don't have to come with me."

So instead of going with her he watered the plants, sat on the porch for a while and stared at the sunset when Rose came back from the store. The lack of people at this time was surprising, but he assumed it were the events of the past days that kept people from going anywhere.

"You're bored, hm?" Rose asked when she was in front of him. "The shower is leaking... if you have nothing else to do." She smiled.

He sighed and got up to inspect the shower.

When Monday came everything was working the way it was supposed to, the house couldn't be cleaner and even the movie drawer hat finally been sorted through. Their bed had fresh sheets, all books had been sorted alphabetically and John's Lego was neatly stored in the boxed underneath the boy's bed.  There was nothing left to do after he had taken care of all the spider webs in the basement and laundry room, scrubbed the tiles until he could see himself in them and bumped into doorframes on occasion.

It was a cold Monday morning. Misty, wet  and utterly unfriendly. Rose had given him his coat back, the sheath and the HF-Blade with it. The TV was running a breaking news story on how John's kidnapper had been arrested by a PMC and that he was probably going to jail for a boat load of charges.

Raiden was glad that the man was taken care of, but he felt sort of disappointed that he had nothing to do with it.

"Dad?" John asked silently when he had packed his backpack for school. "Are you driving me to school or not?"

Raiden had forgotten about that, it hadn't been a promise, but he still felt guilty about it, didn't want to let his son down, yet he was so afraid or the gazes and the whispers.  He sighed. He had been ready to take John to an amusement park just weeks ago. It was ridiculous if he couldn't even bring him to school.

With a deep breath he nodded.

"Awesome!" John squealed, struggled to get the backpack on his back and grabbed the tiny crutches. Raiden would have preferred to keep the boy at home, but he was missing too much of school, so when Raiden pulled the car out of the garage, John was already standing there impatiently, Rose next to him to help him get into the car.

Once the boy was settled and seatbelt fastened, he grinned at his father. "You don't have to get out if you don't want to." He said. "Tyler is going to help me with my stuff."

Raiden nodded, concentrated on the road, trying hard not to mess up the way to the school Rose had told him. He had never been to the boy's school, never felt the need to. Now he was curious. He had missed so much of the boy's short life, he didn't want to miss any more of it. Even if the days were boring, they were peaceful. Even if the people stared and talked behind his back, he didn't have to leave the house.

Twenty minutes later Raiden pulled into a parking lot at the boy's school. John removed his seatbelt and was about to open the door when his father left the car. Raiden had his black coat on, some old jeans. He had the coat closed but the collar was down, and slowly his father made his way around the car. John was aware that everyone close to the car was staring now.

The boy opened the door before Raiden had reached it. Raiden grabbed his backpack and put it next to the car when he helped the boy out. The staring children were bugging him, but not as much as the teachers. It had been a terrible idea to do this. John would never have a normal school day again.

"John!" Tyler exclaimed in excitement when he ran up to the boy and eagerly took the backpack from Raiden. "I'll take it."

Raiden nodded, Let John give him a quick hug, and he and Tyler made their way into the school building.

The cyborg shut the door and was about to head back to the driver's seat, when an older man stopped him.

"Who are you?"

Raiden flinched. How as he supposed to answer to this?

"Is that important?" that came off way more angry than he wanted it to be.

"John has always been brought to school by his mother. Who are you?" The man asked again.

"John's father." Raiden calmly replied despite the dread that was racing through him.

He saw the man lift his eyebrows. He was probably in his mid fifties, Raiden didn't bother to run a check on him, people like him weren't worth the resources. Glasses, short gray hair, thin.

"Aha." The man muttered. "I assume John is aware of you being..."

"A Cyborg. Yes." Raiden growled back, really not sure what the man wanted from him.

"I see."

"I'm sorry, but I really need to go now." Raiden lied. He had nothing to do except wait for John to be done with school and pick him up again, unless Rose was home earlier from work and would do it.

"You're going to rile the children up with your presence."

"So you want my son to wait in school until my wife gets off work so she can pick him up? What's wrong with a father picking up his son from school?" Anger was boiling inside him, it was so hard to keep it under control now. He wanted to let it out. _Jack_ wanted out.

"Well you are a cyborg. Cyborgs-"

A hand landed on the man's shoulder. A woman stood there, read hair tied into a strict bun, thin framed glasses that made her look older and gave Raiden the feel that she was important. She was wearing a black pencil skirt and a blouse to match with a nametag attached to it.

"I believe I have told you to leave the parents alone." The woman told the man firmly.

Raiden watched the man leave, but not without glaring at him.

"I apologize for my colleague." The woman said, reached out a hand to greet him.

Raiden only slowly managed to reach out, carefully shook her hand but pulled away before she got a better look at his hand.

"Julie Winter. John's math teacher." She introduced herself.

"R- Jack." He muttered awkwardly. He wanted to leave. The kids stopped to stare at him the whole time and the few parents who brought their children to school seemed to want to murder him with their gazes.

The woman smiled. "John talks about you a lot."

"I..." he shook his head. He would never get used to this. Why was it so hard to hold a normal conversation with a person that was treating him like an equal? She was staring at his face, but didn't seem frightened or weirded out by it.

"I assume you'll be picking John up after school, too?"

"Unless my wife gets off work earlier, yes..."

The woman nodded. "That's good. I only heard what happened over the news, but seeing both John and Tyler hurt, made me realize how close it had been. You must have been worried, am I right?"

Raiden only nodded. Why was this woman talking so much? He was saved from any more awkward small talk when the woman gazed at her watch and rushed into the building.

Raiden sat in the car for a while, watched the minutes pass, started the engine when the doorbell rang and just drove back home. He would be alone now, Rose off to work. Being alone wasn't fun. Back at Maverick there was always something to do.

When he pulled the car up to their house, parked it outside as he would need it later again anyway, he saw Kevin sit on the porch.

"Yo!" The younger man stood and smiled when Raiden walked up to him.

"Good Morning, Kev. I thought you left with the others?" He unlocked the front door and lead the man inside.

"Told you I wanted to see New Zealand. 'Sides Boris wanted me to investigate something."

"Oh?"

Kevin shrugged. "About some client who messed up some forms. Nothing big."

Raiden nodded, walked into the kitchen. "Coffee?"

"Sure."

The cyborg filled two cups with coffee, sat them down on the dining table and sat down. "Also," Kevin muttered into the cup, "Wanted me to see how you're doing. You haven't called him."

"I'm still not sure about the whole thing..."

"Come on, buddy. You won't get a chance like this again. Besides, it is paid for already, just needs to be built. Dok can start anytime."

"I'd have to leave here again."

"Didn't John want to visit your workplace anyway?"

Raiden sighed. "He's just gotten back to school. I can't take him out of there for two or more weeks. Who knows how long it'll take this time."

Kevin shrugged. "Dok said he has ordered everything already, knew you would take the offer."

"Fine. I'll call Boris."

The younger man lifted an eyebrow. "I came here with tons of arguments. What convinced you to gave in this quickly?"

Raiden stared into the cup. "Boredom... don't get me wrong, I love it here, but there isn't much I can do. I'm not used to have this much time off... I don't even have hobbies in that sense."

"You like to watch movies." Kevin shrugged. "I'd call that a hobby."

The Cyborg kept staring into the cup, not sure what he was going to tell Boris but opened up the codec anyway and called the man.

"Raiden!" Boris greeted him. "You finally decided?"

"Yeah... Let's get it over with..."

Raiden smiled when Boris began to tell him about all the functions that could be added to that body, but he refused. He didn't want something fancy, just something that was suitable for being at home. He'd even prefer to be without the spikes now. The doorframes had begun to look as if they owned a cat.

A very big cat at that.

"I'm taking John with me."

"What about your wife?"

"Don't know if she can get off work. I'll ask her..."

"Take your time, tovarich. But not too long, da?" the man laughed.

"Yeah..."

"Good."

"Boris?"

"Da?"

"Thank you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for staying with me through this. I am so baffled and amazed at all the comments. I’m writing fanfics since 2006, but this is the first time I actually felt like my work was worth something. So i really really want to thank you guys for that.
> 
> I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I will be doing the christmas oneshots this year too. It basically works like an advent calendar with one Oneshot a day from december 1st to december 25th. This year with Metal Gear.
> 
> (i've done those twice, don’t worry about them not getting completed.)
> 
> English is not my Native language. I try my best to make everything as grammatically correct as possible, but I know I'm not perfect.


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